Jason Meshnick, CMT
6 min read
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Stock Market Today: New Records Close Out the First Half of 2025 originally appeared on TheStreet.
It's been quite a quarter and quite a half year. A 20% drop followed by a 28% gain off the intraday lows is nice to see, but it also indicates that the market is volatile!
Regardless, a new high is a new high and those lows gave smart investors the chance to pick up their favorite stocks and funds at sale prices. If you didn't act when you had the chance, the market didn't offer a second round of sales.
Today, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq each gained about 0.5%, while the Dow Jones Industrials were higher by 0.63%. Small caps, represented by the Russell 2000, were the laggards, gaining just 0.12%.
Related: Filthy Rich Animal's Question of the Week: Big Dogs vs. Small Dogs in the S&P 500
Small caps are also lagging in 2025. The Russell is down 2.5% for the year, and 12% off the all-time-high set in November of 2024.
What's it mean? Well, the rally this year has been concentrated.
Not terribly, but just 287 S&P 500 constituents are up this year. That's around 57%. The losers include Apple, Alphabet (GOOGL) , and Tesla. Amazon is flat.
Bonds also rose today, capping off a first half that was positive for them. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price currently stand at 3.72% for the 5-year, 4.23% for the 10-year, and 4.77% for the 30-year.
Gold is up 25% this year, while Crude Oil is down 10%.
As you already know, the big news for the first half of the year has been tariffs. With the 90-day pause set to end on July 9th, we're expecting deals to be done. And so far, some have!
The other big news is the tax bill, Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill. A version has already passed the House and the Senate is currently working on their version. Either version is set to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars. However, they'll also reduce taxes, which will benefit corporations by increasing profitability and therefore have the potential to add new private sector jobs.
On the economic front, the big question is, will he won't he. He being Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the question is whether he'll lower rates. For now, the fed is taking a wait-and-see attitude. Tariffs could prove inflationary and Powell doesn't want to lower rates as inflation is spiking. Still, the economy has shown signs of weakness and the government is eager for rates to come down so they can refinance debt that is coming due.
Tomorrow starts a new month and a new quarter. But the volatility is likely to remain with us.
