Someone has hit the pause button on holiday joy.
Stocks fell to start December after five straight days of gains. The S&P 500 was down 0.5%, Dow was down 0.9%, while the Nasdaq fell 0.4%. Losses were led by the utility sector, which is among the safest corners of the stock market.
The month has started on a bad note not just with stocks but even with bonds. A popular Treasury exchange-traded fund, iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond, declined 1.6%. Bitcoin traded as low as $83,840 today, a steep move lower compared with its peak over $120,000 in October.
The sour tone in bonds could be a pass through from the sell-off seen in the Japanese bond market, where yields on longer-dated bonds rose to a 17-year high. Yields move in the opposite direction of prices.
It’s also possible that a flux of corporate bonds took some demand away from Treasuries today.
“I do think it’s a little bit of a perfect storm. You get a little bit of global move, you get the supply, and it just kind of adds up a little bit,” Citi’s Strategist Jason Williams told Barron’s.
General worries about increased risk in global assets could be a factor for crypto.
Regarding stocks, Chief Market Strategist at BTIG, Jonathan Krinsky writes that stocks had ripped higher heading into Thanksgiving and that created the set-up for a “post-thanksgiving hangover.”
“While December may very well close green, just as November did, the path to get there is likely to be quite volatile yet again,” he added.
Monday’s stock market losses, while small, are particularly annoying for investors in the Dow, who were optimistic about the start of December. Post-election years, it has historically been one of the best months.
It turns out that a post-election December has a 74.2% chance of eking out a gain. Meaning, only one out of every four post-election years is a loss, according to SentimenTrader, which looked at the monthly performance since 1901.
“All in all, the historical results suggest that investors and traders give the bullish case for stocks the benefit of the doubt during December 2025,” according to Jay Kaeppel, senior research analyst at SentimenTrader.
Overall December for the Dow, over the past century, has been the second strongest month of the year with an average gain of 1.46%, according to Bespoke Investment Group.