Stocks inch up heading into Christmas

Markets on Thursday opened slightly up for a shortened Christmas Eve trading day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened up 70 points, or 0.2 percent, and the S&P 500 opened up 9.4 points, or 0.3 percent. The NASDAQ was similarly up 35 points, or 0.3 percent.

Markets will close at 1 p.m. Thursday for the holiday, and will not reopen until Monday.

ADVERTISEMENT

The final days of December tend to be good for stock markets, in a phenomenon known as the “Santa Claus Rally.” The average return over the 7-day period over the last 70 years has been 1.33 percent, according to LPL Financial.

But drama in Washington could yet throw the Santa Rally off its trail. President TrumpDonald TrumpMcCarthy to offer UC request to revisit foreign spending in omnibus GOP senator on Trump pardons: ‘This is rotten to the core’ Trump pardons Manafort, Stone and Charles Kushner in latest round MORE implicitly raised the possibility of vetoing a mammoth, $2.3 trillion year-end funding bill, which would lead to a government shutdown Monday night, allow unemployment programs supporting millions of people to expire, and put off more federal COVID-19 relief.

On Tuesday night, he demanded that the already-passed bills be rewritten to include $2,000 stimulus checks instead of the $600 checks Congress agreed to.