Final Full Trading Week of 2025 Filled with Data

Monday, December 15, 2025

Considering we have wound down another quarterly earnings season and are officially into the holidays this year, we do have an eventful market ahead of us. Delayed jobs and inflation reports (due to the government shutdown this fall) will finally be in focus, along with normal-cycle economic reports in this last full trading week of the year and a few off-season earnings reports.

Pre-market indexes are filling in some holes left on Friday’s down-session — starting early trading in the green and moving higher. The Dow is +244 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is +36, the Nasdaq +160 and thew small-cap Russell 2000 is +21 points currently. The 10-year bond yield remains unchafed at 4.17%, and the 2-year has cooled to 3.50%.
 

Empire State Goes Negative in December

Expecting another positive month in Empire State Manufacturing (a regional print in and around New York State), followers of this metric may be a tad disappointed: -3.9 is the headline for December, missing expectations for +10 and the +18.7 reported the prior month, which was the highest since November of last year.

This is only the second negative monthly print on Empire State manufacturing over the past six months. The prior six months were a different story: five of six months in negative territory, which helped illustrate the struggles in domestic manufacturing in this region over the recent past. Prices paid dropped by a bigger number than prices received. We hope to see a reversal next month.
 

What to Expect from Today’s Stock Market

After today’s opening bell, we’ll see fresh results from the latest Homebuilders Confidence survey for December. Over the previous two months, we’ve seen a modest resurgence from the depleted levels over this past spring and summer. Expectations are for a print of 38, same as posted a month ago. Aside from the headline number, this survey will demonstrate the level of ongoing challenges felt among domestic homebuilders, which is likely significant.

Fed Governor Stephen Miran and New York Fed President John Williams are scheduled to make public appearances today, likely to argue on both sides of the current dispute among interest-rate decision making. Miran, on loan from the White House, has consistently advocated for 50 basis-point (bps) cuts to the Fed funds rate, while Williams has voted with the consensus routinely during his tenure as Fed President — first in San Francisco and now New York.
 

Long-Awaited Jobs Numbers Out Tuesday

Ahead of tomorrow’s open, we expect to see non-farm payrolls reported from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the month of November. Expectations are for +50K new jobs created last month, below the threshold needed to account for monthly retirees, and thus amounting to negative jobs growth overall. The Unemployment Rate is expected to climb to +4.5%.

The good news about this is that there’s a low bar to clear for a positive surprise. Because the government shutdown delayed October jobs numbers, we have less of a clear view of the labor market than we normally would. Thus, be prepared for anything, even an unexpected monthly job boost. That, however, may not be met with positive sentiment from market participants, as weak jobs numbers are helping the Fed work down interest rates.

During the course of this week, we do expect some key earnings data from a wide range of industries. These include homebuilders Lennar LEN and KB Home KBH, data storage producer Micron MU, FedEx FDX and Nike NKE. Not bad for the final full trading week of 2025.

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