Rally Santa didn’t show up, but that’s not necessarily bad news

This is a report from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open provides investors with information on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

A tough week of trading
US stocks rose on Friday but still ended the week lower. The S&P 500 energy sector bucked the trend and rose more than 3% for the week. Asia-Pacific markets Monday’s trading is mixed. South Korea’s Kospi jumped nearly 2%. political uncertainty continues. China’s CSI 300 index fell about 0.6%, even though Caixin Service Purchasing Managers Index in December it increased at the fastest rate in seven months.

The year of Boeing’s reconstruction
Boeing has not published annual earnings since 2018, the first of two fatal losses crash of his 737 Maxes 346 people died. A year ago, the emergency exit door was not used blew in the air from a nearly new Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9. New CEO Kelly Ortberg, who took over the top job in August, is tasked with ensuring Boeing can ramp up production and maintain quality. here how is he doing.

Microsoft is investing heavily in data centers
Microsoft is planning spend $80 billion in fiscal year 2025 to build data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads, the company said on Friday blog post. More than half of expected AI infrastructure spending will come from the US, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith wrote. Microsoft’s 2025 fiscal year ends in June.

Remove competition from vacuum cleaners?
Shares of Chinese robot vacuum cleaner company Roborock jumped more than 3% on Monday after it was announced that new model which comes with a folding lever for removing socks and other obstructions. Its appendage is powered by artificial intelligence developed by the company, which has a laboratory in Shanghai and a research institute in Shenzhen.

(PRO) December jobs report
Big chunks of economic data this week, the minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s December meeting, due out on Wednesday, and the December jobs report, due out on Friday. While neither is likely to change the Fed’s interest rate decision at its January meeting, they could provide more clarity on the central bank’s actions in 2025.

On Friday S&P 500 added 1.26%, art Dow Jones industrial index gained 0.8% and Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.77%. Still, the losses from the previous trading sessions — until Friday the S&P and Nasdaq were on a five-day losing streak — were too much to bear. For the week, the S&P fell 0.48%, the Dow lost 0.60% and the Nasdaq retreated 0.51%.

That means the so-called Santa Claus rally, a phenomenon in which stocks rise during the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the next, hasn’t hit markets this year.

The absence of Santa Claus this year may indicate a tough times for stocks Like the late Yale Hirsch, the founder Stock Trader’s Almanac in 1968, said“If Santa doesn’t call, the bears might come to Broad and Wall.”

However, putting too much faith in such cues can be the adult equivalent of believing that it really is Santa putting a PlayStation under the tree because we were good kids.

And just as we grow older and realize that money gives us gifts, we must remember that the stock market is a bet on how much money a company can make.

On that front, UBSDavid Lefkowitz, the bank’s chief investment officer in US equities, is optimistic. “We expect the bull market to continue as the S&P 500 hits 6,600 by the end of the year, driven mainly by a 9% gain in earnings,” Lefkowitz wrote in a recent note. Its price target suggests an upside of about 11% from Friday’s close.

Now this is such a precious gift that no human being, real or imagined, could ever give.

— CNBC’s Fred Imbert, Piya Singh, Sean Conlon, Jesse Pound and Sarah Min contributed to this report.