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Happy Thursday. This is TheStreet’s Stock Market Today for Dec. 18, 2025. You can follow the latest updates on the market here in our daily live blog.
The U.S. markets are now closed for the day. The Nasdaq (+1.38%) closed out the session up more than 1%, handed a healthy injection of optimism from Micron Technology, which jumped over 10%.
It lifted the broader industry after days of so-so news in the sector, which has been quarreling with “bubble” talk amid a row of news from hyperscaler Oracle, among others.
Certainly helping matters today were positive inflation data, although its authenticity was called into question amid concerns about the collection affected by the government shutdown.
The S&P 500(+0.79%) and Russell 2000 (+0.62%) also finished out the day with its own strong showing, thanks to many of the same circumstantial bounces. Meanwhile, the Dow (+0.14%) lagged the other indexes.
While technology, communication services, and industrials — which have struggled in recent sessions — finally turned the corner, consumer defensive trades and real estate took on some water today. Worst of all, the energy sector continued a weeks-long decline as U.S. oil (WTI) fell below $56 overnight. Here’s how the S&P 500 looked:
Past midday, the Nasdaq (+1.40%) and Russell 2000 (+0.98%) have traded places, as well as faced a modest bit of pullback. The S&P 500 (+0.81%) and Dow (+0.20%) have also seen some of this midday sluggishness. But that said, we’re finally going to check in on the top and bottom stocks in the markets in our daily Midday Movers list, which aims to capture what stocks are making big moves — and why:
Atop the winners list today is Trump Media & Technology Group (+40%), which announced a merger with privately-held TAE Technologies earlier (scroll down to find out more; we covered it earlier!)
It’s also joined by Micron Technology (+13.2%), which announced a stronger-than-expected profit for the coming quarter today amid a shortage in memory products.
Rounding out the top three, Applied Digital Corporation (+11.7%) is rising after announcing that it secured a loan facility to fund a new data center development.
On the other end of the market, biotech company Insmed (-15.6%) is falling after its DPP1 inhibitor for rhinosinusitis fell short in a phase two trial.
It’s joined by another healthcare company, Inspire Medical Systems (-15.7%), which appears to be sliding amid an analyst note that could affect Medicare reimbursement.
Rounding out the top three is ABM Industries (-11.3%), which is in selloff mode after reporting disappointing earnings.
An astonishing 70.3% (3,912) U.S. issues are rising today against 26% (1,445) in decline. For a moment though, we turn our attention to the S&P 500 (+1.10%) — where 366 of the index’s 503 constituents are up — for a moment to see the impact of today’s good news.
Tech names in particular are appreciating a nice bump thanks to the positive macro news, plus the AI-flavored optimism from Micron Technology (+10.9%, the best performer in the index today). That news is lifting Sandisk (+7.4%), Western Digital (+7%), and other AI-flavored stocks; we’ll likely see quite a few of them in our Midday Movers list in about an hour.
Trump Media and TechnologyGroup surged more than 30% after announcing a $6 billion merger with power company TAE Technologies, a privately-held ‘fusion power’ startup.
The merger will see shareholders in both firms own a 50/50 cut in the newly-combined entity, which will hold both Truth Social and TAE, which hopes to build a “utility-scale” fusion power plant.
It comes after months of sluggish performance from the one-time meme stock, which had lost over 70% of its value year-to-date before today. The acquisition might be an effort by the company to reignite its retail fervor and position itself for a possible ‘limitless’ revolution in energy generation.
However, that revolution still has yet to pan out. While power generation plays have been in vogue thanks to AI optimism, virtually none of the companies in the private sector have successfully created a nuclear or fusion reactor. The vast majority of the research on fusion in particular has been done by the U.S. government.
The U.S. markets are now open for the day. Unlike in recent trading days, today’s opening trade is looking a lot more friendly after the rate of inflation was showed to have significantly cooled in November, producing new hopes for the rate cut narrative next year.
And where there are rate cut murmurs, there are traders bidding up equities. The Russell 2000 (+1.47%) and Nasdaq (+1.3%) are up more than one percent already this morning, building on gains in the futures session. The S&P 500 (+0.92%) and Dow (+0.63%) aren’t looking too shabby out of the gate, either.
Only helping out this morning, the tech industry is getting a small bump from Micron Technology, which is forecasting a far more aggressive adjusted profit in the coming-quarter as the still-strong AI boom reduces available supply of memory chips and other products. It’s up over 14% this morning.
For some added context, here’s a heat map of the S&P 500. It’s showing some healthy gains across sectors which have been particularly battered this week, namely tech and industrials names.
Outside of equities, the 10Y Treasury is 3.9 bips lower at 4.112% after the big earnings and jobless reports today; the 20Y and 30Y are 3.1 and 2.9 bips lower at 4.752% and 4.799%.
In continuous contracts for commodities, WTI Crude is 0.68% higher at $56.32, but as you can see on the heat map, many energy names are still getting hammered as the U.S. oil benchmark fell below $56 last night on President Donald Trump addressed the nation — leading many to woe about a possible armed conflict with Venezuela during the holiday season.
Natural Gas (+2.53%) is also higher today, while metals like Gold (-0.35% to $4,358.70) and Silver (-2.23% to $65.41) are lower as well.
Good morning. In the last few minutes, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was released, revealing that November inflation was far more tepid than expected. Even better, Initial Jobless Claims declined, even though continuing claims ticked up.
As a result, U.S. equity futures are biased to the upside this morning, giving traders high hopes for a turnaround after four consecutive days of losses in the S&P 500. Here is what is on deck today:
In the last few minutes, the Consumer Price Index and Core CPI dropped, along with Initial and Continuing Jobless Claims. The takeaways are pretty good: both inflation measures came in lower than expected. However, some analysts caution that the data collection might have been inaccurate, stirring concerns.
Meanwhile, initial claims declined week-over-week to 224,000 (from 237,000). The only real downside as an uptick in continuing claims, which came in at nearly 1.9 million; still, analysts seemed to expect a worse readout.
Although the CPI and Jobless Claims are out of the way for today, there’s still a few more reports in what has shaped up to be one of the busier days for economic data this year. The Philly Fed Business Conditions Index is another morning report of consequence which just released, telling the market a different story — it saw a significant contraction in conditions month-over-month at 41.6 (down from 49.6).
Still on deck, we’ll have the Kansas Fed Composite, a few bill auctions, and some overdue data from October.
Today is also shaping up to be one of the last days of big earnings this year, with Accenture, Nike, Cintas, and others slated to report. Here are the earnings, per Nasdaq, expected today from firms with at least a $1 billion market cap:
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Dec 18, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest Business & Market News section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.