S&P 500 posts back-to-back gains Friday as AI trade makes a comeback: Live updates

The three major averages finished with gains on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.88% to end the day at 6,834.50, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.31% to 23,307.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 183.04 points, or 0.38%, to reach 48,134.89.

— Sean Conlon

Christmas is around the corner, but Wall Street isn't feeling the holiday spirit heading into the week ahead.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are lower for the month, marking an unusually weak stretch for stocks. December has historically been one of the stronger months for equities, with both benchmarks averaging a gain more than 1%, according to data from the Stock Trader's Almanac.

The declines put the S&P 500 on track to snap a seven-month rally. On top of that, the index is struggling to hold above its 50-day moving average, as pointed out by BTIG chief market technician Jonathan Krinsky. That's an indication Santa Claus might leave a lump of coal on Wall Street this year.

"There's a lot of concerns that seem to be potentially hindering an end of year rally," said Justin Bergner, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. "Perhaps limiting it to an end of year grind, or maybe just an end of year churn." CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Sarah Min

DraftKings launched on Friday its prediction markets offering, entering an increasingly crowded field of betting platforms accepting wagers on real-world event outcomes.

The sports betting firm's DraftKings Predictions will touch on sports and finance, with other topics becoming available in the future. The event contacts will be available in 38 states.

The roll out comes after DraftKings announced its acquisition of prediction markets platform Railbird last October.

DraftKings is one of several companies aiming to jump into the prediction markets fray. This year, Coinbase and Robinhood have unveiled partnerships with Kalshi. And this month, crypto exchange Gemini clinched approval from the CFTC to operate its own prediction markets.

The company's stock was last trading roughly flat on the day, although shares ticked up earlier in Friday's session.

— Liz Napolitano

The Invesco QQQ ETF, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the Nasdaq 100 Index, will soon get cheaper to own.

The ETF's shareholders voted to convert QQQ to an open-ended investment vehicle, effectively reducing fees tied to ownership of the fund, Invesco said Friday in a statement. Trading of the open-ended fund will go live on December 22.

Investor fees will be reduced to 0.18% from 0.2%.

— Liz Napolitano

As the new year draws closer, eyes are turning to Wall Street to see whether it will pull off the coveted Santa Claus rally.

The so-called rally — coined by Yale Hirsch, founder of the Stock Trader's Almanac, in 1972 — occurs between the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the new year. In this case, that would be from the opening bell on Dec. 24 until the second trading day of 2026, or Jan. 5.

Since 1950, the S&P 500 has recorded an average gain of 1.3% over the course of the seven-day trading period, and this year, the index should add to that, according to Jeffrey Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Almanac.

"We've seen this opening part of the month choppy and a mid-December low, [which is] very typical of December trading," he said in an interview with CNBC. "I think that sets up a Santa Claus rally." Hirsch added that the index's rise on Thursday and Friday "doesn't take anything away" from such a rally coming to fruition. Read more.

— Sean Conlon

Oracle's partnership with TikTok locks in a large infrastructure customer that gives some upside optionality to the beaten-down cloud stock, according to Evercore ISI.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Thursday said that TikTok's U.S. division will be run by a joint venture that includes Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. The U.S. spin-out of the social media giant designates Oracle as a core equity holder and security partner of TikTok, Axios first reported.

"The equity stake provides some upside optionality related to TikTok's continued growth and advertising economics, while also giving Oracle insight into advanced AI and recommendation systems that reinforce its broader data and AI strategy," analyst Kirk Materne said in a note to clients, adding that the deal guarantees a large Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) customer that remains a key source of growth and opportunity for the future.

"While we expect Oracle's financing needs related to the build out of its AI infrastructure will remain the key point of debate in the near-term, this is a nice win for Oracle with some upside optionality over the long-term," he continued. "We continue to believe the recent pullback represents an interesting entry point with investors that can take a 6-12 month view."

Materne reiterated his outperform rating on Oracle and kept his $275 price target on the stock, which implies nearly 52.8% potential upside. Shares of Oracle have plunged roughly 31% year to date.

— Pia Singh

Idaho-based French fry maker Lamb Weston plunged 24% Friday after leaving its full fiscal year sales guidance unchanged despite better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results, implying the potential for a weak third or fourth quarter.

"EBITDA margin was a touch light of [consensus] and a held FY'26 guide implies H2 midpoint below expectations despite H1 overdelivery," wrote Jefferies food analyst Scott Marks.

Lamb Weston is seeing its worst one-day decline since July 2024 and is trading at levels last seen at the outbreak of Covid in March 2020.

— Scott Schnipper, Tom Rotunno

Check out some of the stocks making the biggest moves in midday trading.

• Lamb Weston – The producer of fries and frozen potato products saw shares tank 25%. Though Lamb Weston posted beats on the top and bottom lines in the second quarter, the company reaffirmed its full-year revenue guidance of $6.35 billion to $6.55 billion. The FactSet consensus called for $6.53 billion.
• Carnival Corporation – The cruise operator's shares jumped 8% after management called out "record booking volumes for 2026 and 2027 sailings." Adjusted earnings in the fourth quarter came in at 34 cents per share on an adjusted basis, compared to the LSEG consensus estimate of 25 cents per share.
• Oracle — Shares were up more than 7%. The stock rallied after TikTok agreed to sell its U.S. operations to a new joint venture that includes the software giant and private equity investor Silver Lake.

Read here for the full list.

— Darla Mercado

Oracle shares have fallen more than 45% since its all-time high on Sept. 10, based on the stock's latest close price. The once-hot artificial intelligence stock has become the poster child for investors' fears around an AI bubble.

Shares of Oracle jumped more than 7% on Friday after the cloud company joined a group of investors slated to lead TikTok's U.S. operations. Still, the stock is down roughly 31.3% year to date, with losses earlier this week sparked by a report that asset management firm Blue Owl Capital pulled out from Oracle's $10 billion data center project on debt concerns.

Oracle's fall in recent sessions has weighed on AI chipmakers such as Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Still, many analysts believe that artificial intelligence trade has legs to stand on. "The AI trade may still have room to run into 2026," Bank of America analysts said in a recent note.

— Pia Singh

Citi just gave its top internet stock picks for 2026, which range from a couple Big Tech names to a beaten-down domain registry platform.

Citi analysts Ronald Josey and Ygal Arounian listed Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, DoorDash, VeriSign, Ebay, Reddit and GoDaddy among their top bets for next year.

"On AMZN, we note accelerating AWS growth led by AI demand, eCommerce wallet share gains, and greater margin expansion and on GOOGL its industry leading AI tools should translate into continued Search revenue growth with Cloud growth accelerating given demand for its TPUs, leading FMs, and infrastructure capacity. We are also raising our AWS and Google Cloud projections," the analysts wrote in a Friday note to clients.

Josey is bullish on DoorDash's market leadership in food delivery, new verticals and strong execution track records. Reddit should see expanding profitability, he noted.

Separately, the analysts reiterated their buy rating on Meta but removed it from Citi's focus list, saying they "await greater clarity on its strategic product investments and revenue drive."

— Pia Singh

Consumer sentiment for December increased less than expected, a University of Michigan survey released Friday showed.

Its monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment reported a reading of 52.9 for the month, up from the 51.0 reading for November but still below the 53.5 that economists polled by Dow Jones had been looking for.

— Sean Conlon

The iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF (EUFN) rose almost 1% in morning trading and hit a new intraday all-time high on Friday, putting the fund on pace for its best year ever back to its inception in 2010.

That's been propelled by the sizable year-to-date gains of names such as SocGen, Commerzbank, Banco Santander, BBVA, ABN AMRO and Deutsche Bank, which have more than doubled.

— Gina Francolla, Sean Conlon

Stocks kicked off the final trading session of the week in the green.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% just after the opening bell, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 201 points, or 0.4%.

— Sean Conlon

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said Friday that "technical factors" likely distorted November's inflation data, pushing the headline reading lower than it otherwise would have been.

"There were some special factors of practical factors that really are related to the fact that they weren't able to collect date in October and not in the first half of November. And because of that, I think the data were distorted in some of the categories, and that pushed down the CPI reading, probably by a tenth or so," Williams said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"It's hard to know, we'll get some when we'll get to December date, I think we'll get a better reading of how much that distortion, how big the effect was, but I do think that that was pushed down a bit by these technical factors," he added. Read more.

— Yun Li

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell.

• Oracle — Shares were up more than 5% in the premarket after TikTok agreed to sell its U.S. operations to a new joint venture that includes the software giant and private equity investor Silver Lake.
• CoreWeave — The stock rose 5.5% after the cloud infrastructure technology company joined the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission to advance U.S. research and innovation. Additionally, Citi resumed coverage CoreWeave and a price target implies that shares could double from current levels.
• Generac — Wells Fargo upgraded Generac to overweight from equal weight, citing the energy technology firm's accelerating growth outlook for diesel gensets as backup power for AI data centers. It also raised its price target. Shares rose 3%.

Read the full list here.

— Liz Napolitano

Investors should scoop up shares of Generac as power demand from artificial intelligence increases, according to Wells Fargo.

Analyst Praneeth Satish upgraded the power generator maker to overweight from equal weight. His price target of $195, up from $186, signals a gain of 42.3% from Thursday's close.

Generac has been under pressure of late, dropping nearly 28% since the company posted weaker-than-expected third-quarter results on Oct. 29. Satish also pointed out that worries around AI have hurt the stock.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Fred Imbert

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller had a "strong interview" for the central bank chair position with President Donald Trump in which the two discussed the labor market in depth and how to jumpstart job creation, according to senior administration officials.

The interview took place in the president's residence and concluded shortly before Trump addressed the nation on the economy Wednesday night. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino also attended the interview.

Blackrock's Rick Rieder will be interviewed at Mar-a-Lago for the Fed chair job the last week of the year, the officials said. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman is no longer a candidate for the job, they also said. Read more.

— Steve Liesman

Oracle shares were up more than 5% in the premarket after TikTok agreed to sell its U.S. operations to a new joint venture that includes the software giant and private equity investor Silver Lake.

— Fred Imbert

The New York Stock Exchange told CNBC that it will not change its trading schedule for Dec. 24 and Dec. 26, despite President Donald Trump's executive order to close the federal government on both of those days.

Trump issued an executive order on Thursday stating: "All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall be closed and their employees excused from duty on Wednesday, December 24, 2025, and Friday, December 26, 2025, the day before and the day following Christmas Day, respectively."

— David Sucherman, Pia Singh

Shares of FedEx rose modestly after the shipping giant posted fiscal second quarter results that surpassed Wall Street's estimates.

FedEx reported adjusted earnings of $4.82 per share on revenue of $23.47 billion, while the LSEG consensus expected $4.11 per share and $22.79 billion, respectively.

The stock advanced 2% in extended trading, bringing FedEx within striking distance from its 52-week high of $295.24. Shares hit that threshold on Dec. 20, 2024.

—Darla Mercado

Nike posted fiscal second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street's estimates, aided by strength in the sports apparel company's North America business that helped to offset a decline in China sales.

Shares dropped 10% in extended trading as investors digested the weakness in China and the sustained hit Nike is taking from higher tariffs.

Here's what Nike reported for its second fiscal quarter of 2026, per LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 53 cents vs. 38 cents expected
• Revenue: $12.43 billion vs. $12.22 billion expected

While Nike said that sales in North America rose 9% to $5.63 billion, revenue in its Greater China market dropped 17% to $1.42 billion.

— Pia Singh, Laya Neelakandan

Shortly after 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, futures tied to the S&P 500 inched down 0.05% and Nasdaq-100 futures slipped 0.06%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 79 points, or 0.2%.

— Pia Singh