CLOSING BELL
Ba Humbug
The market was lower to start the week, with investors looking out from a red Monday at a deluge of delayed economic data.
The big news this week is tomorrow's labor data for November, CPI on Thursday, and PCE inflation data for October on Friday.
Tech stocks slid for a second session in a row, but at least this week is not a heavy one for AI accelerator reports. Broadcom was still falling in its second day of a post-report stupor, ARM was down nearly 5% after a Goldman Sachs Analyst cut to ‘sell.’ Not all tech was red. Tesla climbed after yet another bull call from Dan Ives. Weed stocks burned up again with more rumors of reclassification.
Bitcoin fell back below 90k, nearly below 80k, and pulled down crypto equities like Marathon Digital and Coinbase. On the contrary, Gold and Silver were climbing, Silver up 3% toward retaking a record set near $65/ troy ounce set Friday.
In the waning few weeks of 2025, it seems market chat is looking further ahead to the new year, rather than back at the slow-moving start of what many hoped would be a December Santa rally to end a ripping year.
S&P 500 Sectors
STOCKS
Ford EV Strategy Overhaul Is Going To Cost $19.5B
RIP Ford F150 EVs
Right as the market closed Monday, America’s old car-making giant Ford $F ( ▼ 0.8% ) said it was moving away from trying to sell EVs, and tuning its electric truck and car infrastructure toward battery and hybrid car sales in a major facelift. The kicker: it’s going to cost just shy of $20B in the fourth quarter.
The truck king maker pulled in $50B in the most recent quarter, and $2B in profit, meaning this coming quarter will need some advanced accounting acrobatics to reach a per-share GAAP profitability at this rate.
The hefty price tag was actually not a bad look, the stock climbing in the post-market, any news good news following years of EV losses for Ford. The division lost $13B in the past two years, and Chief Jim Farley said they are pivoting.
“This announcement is about moving to more profitable vehicles,” Farley said, cutting certain EVs like F150 trucks, and moving toward a range that includes a $30k EV pickup, but also measures half of sales volume in hybrid vehicles.
Ford is turning its Kentucky EV battery factory into an energy storage business for wind, solar, and even data center developers. (BUZZWORD)
Ford is testing the age-old art of war saying:
“If no one wants to buy your batteries on wheels, cement them into the ground.”
ETF NEWS
Nasdaq Index Shake-Up: Six Names Out, Six Names In, $600 Billion in Motion
Nasdaq said Friday it had reconstituted its top-of-the-line Nasdaq-100 Index, with the changes taking effect premarket Monday, December 22, 2025. It’s an annual, mandatory measure to ensure the index tracks only the 100 largest non-financial companies. It typically triggers major buying and selling activity by funds tracking the benchmark.
Restructuring is a hot time for stocks moving on to the list: the NASDAQ 100 is tracked by what seems like an infinite number of investing products. Invesco’s QQQ ETF $QQQ ( ▼ 0.5% ) collectively manages over $600 billion in assets globally. All these products must adjust their portfolios to reflect the new constituents, often leading to temporary price volatility in the affected stocks in the days before the change.
The New Faces: Growth and Data Infrastructure
The six companies being added to the Index are largely focused on growth areas like specialized biotechnology and data infrastructure, reflecting recent strong market cap performance:
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. $ALNY ( ▼ 1.52% )
Ferrovial SE $FER ( ▲ 1.05% )
Insmed Incorporated $INSM ( ▼ 0.05% )
Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. $MPWR ( ▲ 0.31% )
Seagate Technology Holdings plc $STX ( ▼ 0.72% )
Western Digital Corp. $WDC ( ▼ 2.44% )
We Can’t All Be Winners: Retail, Software Names Leaving The List
Six companies are being removed from the Index, indicating their market capitalization has fallen below the required threshold. The list includes high-flyers that have struggled in the topsy-turvy year of our lord, 2025:
Biogen Inc. BIIB
CDW Corporation CDW
GlobalFoundries Inc. GFS
Lululemon Athletica Inc. LULU
ON Semiconductor Corporation ON
The Trade Desk, Inc. TTD
TRENDING NEWS
iRobot Falls After BankruptcyFling
iRobot fell big time Monday, $IRBT ( ▼ 72.69% ) after the rumba maker said over the weekend it wouldn’t be making it to the holidays: it filed for bankruptcy and is handing its operations over to its Shenzen-based supplier Picea Robotics.
The stock recently jumped after an executive order said the White House was doing big things coming soon in robotics, like an executive branch SoundCloud rapper. From Nov. 20 to Dec. 11, IRBT surged a whopping 300%.
It wasn’t enough for the Massachusetts-based robot vacuum maker. It’s been losing money on sales since the pandemic, Bloomberg reported, and its only lifeline was a failed buyout by Amazon that couldn’t clear regulatory approval in the EU. The 46% tariff tax on its main factories in China hit the company like an ICBM, and even after moving production to Vietnam, the end was already in sight.
The stock fell 75% after its Chapter 11 filing, and the firm listed up to $500M in assets and liabilities. The 35-year-old MIT alumnus-founded firm will change hands, and the stock will come off the Nasdaq after listing 20 years ago.
If you use Rumba products, not much should change, according to the company filing, so don’t worry about automated dust clean-up before the in-laws get here for the holidays.
iRobot hit its head on what would become its revenue ceiling in 2021, according to Fiscal.ai
POPS & DROPS
Top Stocks News Stories
Costco stock dropped on a rare 'sell' call.
Walmart and Target face FDA scrutiny over recalled baby formula.
Uber stock slipped as regulators pressed cases on billing and cancellations.
NVIDIA acquired SchedMD to expand its open-source AI efforts.
OpenAI history is reviewed through a collection of 10 charts.
Tesla market cap could double to $3 trillion by 2026, Dan Ives said.
Arm Holdings was downgraded by Goldman Sachs.
A Bank of Japan rate hike could potentially put Bitcoin under stress.
STOCKS VIDEO
Google Insiders Are Rigging The Game (And You’re The Sucker)
Howard is back with another episode of This Week in the Degenerate Economy, and this one is pure distilled degeneracy.
WHAT’S ON DECK
Tomorrow’s Top Things
Economic data: ADP Employment Change Weekly (8:15 AM), Core Retail Sales MoM (8:30 AM), Private Nonfarm Payrolls (8:30 AM), Retail Sales MoM (8:30 AM), Unemployment Rate (8:30 AM), S&P Global PMI (9:45 AM), Business Inventories MoM (10:00 AM), API Weekly Crude Oil Stock (4:30 PM).
Pre-Market Earnings: Organigram Global ($OGI), and Essa Pharma ($EPIX).
After-Market Earnings: Lennar ($LEN), and ALT5 Sigma ($ALTS). .
Here’s how the rest of the market performed.