20 hours ago

The Stock Market Ended a Great Week With a Rare Event. Don't Expect the Quiet to Last.

It was almost like the stock market never opened today.

Most trading days, we expect something to happen. That wasn’t the case on Friday, for the major stock market indexes at least. The S&P 500 declined 2.05 points, or just 0.03%, while the Dow declined 19.95 points, or 0.04%, and the Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.1%.

The S&P 500 rarely moves this little on the day after Christmas–just five times going back to 1956—though it did happen just last year. It also occurred in 1956, 1959, 1977, and 2011. The S&P 500 dipped 0.1%, on average, over the rest of those years, though that was skewed by last year’s 2.6% decline, and actually rose three out of the five times.