Francesca Fontana

Hey, listeners.

It's Saturday, January 3rd.

I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them.

Let's get to it.

Welcome to 2026, everybody.

Hope you all had a great time ringing in the new year.

I myself had a rager, a marathon of Turner Classic movies with my cat.

No better way to party in my book.

Yes, it was a sleepy holiday in my house and it was a pretty sleepy week in the market to close out 2025.

No big rally to speak of on New Year's Eve.

But how did stocks do for the year, which was a volatile year at that?

Well, all three indexes finished the year higher, with the S&P 500 marking its third back-to-back year of double-digit gains.

The S&P gained 16% in 2025, while the Dow gained 13% and the Nasdaq rose 20%.

And on the week, all three major indexes ended lower.

The S&P fell 1%, the Dow lost about 0.7%, and the Nasdaq fell 1.5%.

Now, the end of 2025 also brought a sudden end to the wild ride for precious metals, as silver and others lost some of their shine for investors.

For months, investors had been snapping up precious metals funds as protection against a potential weakening of the U.S.

dollar and uncertainty around richly valued tech stocks.

But on Monday, silver futures experienced their steepest one-day decline in almost five years.

Why the slide?