Bulls celebrate New Year

The first full week of the New Year felt a lot like the latter part of the old one.

The US stock market notched new record highs, but tech wasn’t the primary driver. Rallies in gold and silver helped lift materials to one of the week’s biggest sector gains. And small caps seemed to want to prove their relative strength in the second half of last year wasn’t a fluke.

After closing at a new all-time high last Tuesday, the S&P 500 (SPX) lost some momentum, but it ended the week with another record in the wake of the monthly jobs report:

The headline: Unexpected pockets of strength as bulls claim first week of 2026.

The fine print: Amazon’s (AMZN) 9% rally last week was a standout in the “Magnificent 7,”  but it wasn’t the only contributor to the consumer discretionary sector’s relative strength. That honor went to the auto components industry, which gained more than 12%. Morgan Stanley & Co. recently called out consumer discretionary as one of the best-positioned sectors for this year’s expected market tailwinds.¹

The numbers: 50,000 and 4.4%, last month’s payroll increase and unemployment rate, respectively. Friday’s mixed jobs report—payroll growth was softer than expected, but unemployment dipped—didn’t do much to move the rate-cut needle. The odds of a January rate cut slipped from around 12% to 5% after the numbers came out, while the probability of a March cut hovered around 30%.

The scorecard: The Russell 2000 (RUT) small-cap index led the market by a wide margin last week:

Sector returns: The strongest S&P 500 sectors last week were consumer discretionary (+5.7%), materials (+4.7%), and industrials (+2.5%). The weakest sectors were utilities (-1.5%), tech (+0.2%), and real estate (+0.5%).

Stock moves: Regencell Bioscience (RGC) +60% to $52.88 on Wednesday (and +32% to $27.04 on Monday), Aeva Technologies (AEVA) +34% to $17.59 on Tuesday. Zenas Biopharma (ZBIO) -52% to $16.61 on Monday, Beta Bionics (BBNX) -37% to $20.14 on Friday.

Yields and the dollar: The 10-year US Treasury yield fell 0.02% to 4.17% last week. The US Dollar Index (DXY) climbed 0.71 to 99.13.

Futures: February gold (GCG6) rallied $171.30 to $4,500.90 last week. Thanks to a Thursday-Friday upswing, WTI crude oil (CLG6) ended last week up $1.80 at $59.12—its highest level in a month. Biggest rallies: March Lithium (LTHH6) +18.5%, March silver (SIH6) +11.7%. Biggest declines: March natural gas (NGH6) -13.4%, March cocoa (CCH6) -9%.

Inflation data (CPI and PPI) are highlights on the economic calendar, along with retail sales:

●Monday: Quarterly Grain Stocks
●Tuesday: NFIB Business Optimism Index, Consumer Price Index (CPI), New Home Sales
●Wednesday: Producer Price Index (PPI), Retail Sales, Existing Home Sales, Business Inventories, Beige Book
●Thursday: import and export prices, Empire State Manufacturing Index, Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index
●Friday: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

Big banks herald the start of a new earnings season:

●Monday: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY)
●Tuesday: Bank Of New York Mellon (BK), Concentrix (CNXC), Delta Air Lines (DAL), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Reddit (RDDT)
●Wednesday: Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), H.B. Fuller (FUL), J.B. Hunt Transport (JBHT), Wells Fargo (WFC)
●Thursday: Blackrock (BLK), Goldman Sachs (GS), Infosys (INFY), Morgan Stanley (MS)
●Friday: BOK Financial (BOKF), PNC Financial (PNC), State Street (STT)

Check the Active Trader Commentary each morning for an updated list of earnings announcements, IPOs, economic reports, and other market events.

Last Tuesday the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) ended the day at a new record high—and, as most market recaps that day pointed out—closed above 49,000 for the first time.

The not-so-hidden subtext of those observations is that 50,000—an impressive, round-number milestone that will generate plenty of headlines whenever it occurs—is likely around the corner.

History suggests that may depend on your definition of a “corner.” The following table shows how long it took the Dow (in trading days) to close above each of its past eight 5,000-point thresholds after first closing within 2% of them—the same position the blue-chip index was in last Tuesday:

The wait ranged from 15 trading days (three weeks) to 199 trading days (more than seven months), although in half the cases it was less than four weeks. The outlier, as one might expect, was 2020. The Dow closed within 2% of 30,000 on February 12—just before the COVID sell-off unfolded. The index didn’t close above 30,000 until November 24.

Setting aside 2020, the other examples suggest that if the market isn’t unusually bullish or bearish (always a big if), the wait time for Dow 50,000 could be between 15 and 54 trading days. Since it’s been four trading days since last Tuesday (including today), that means the “target range” is currently 11 to 50 trading days—roughly two to 10 weeks from now.

As always, though, it’s impossible to know when the next outlier will occur.

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¹ MorganStanley.com. Weekly Warm-up: Synergistic Drivers Facilitate the Rolling Recovery. 1/5/26.