December 29 – Santa Rally Continues but Gold Still Rules
Happy Holidays from everyone at ValuEngine! Due to the holidays and vacation schedules this week’s Market Summary and Commentary will be brief and missing the ETF and stock performance tables. All will resume as normal next week. Here is the strategy note for this week:
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As predicted last week, the Santa Claus rally has continued despite Friday’s slight dip. Invesco Nasdaq-100 ETF QQQM and State Street SPDR S&P 500 Portfolio ETF SPYM both rose more than 1% while the iShares Russell 2000 ETF representing small cap (IWM) rose about ½ that much. Foreign equities did not fare as well with iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF EEM down 0.5% and developed markets standard iShares MSCI EAFE ETF down 0,4%. Once again GLDM surpassed everything, rising 1.5%
With just three days left to the year and the need for year-end portfolios to be used for marketing purposes, mega-cap tech as represented by QQQ should do well through Wednesday. If that turns out to be correct, and of course there are no guarantees in the market, then Friday may see a small sell-off. For 2026, our predictive ranks still project the shift from growth to value to resume after the New Year with Vanguard Value ETF (VTV) rated 4 (Buy) as compared with Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG) , SPYM and QQQ all rated 3 (Hold),
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Although ValuEngine does not rate Exchange Traded Vehicles such as GLDM which holds gold bars, we do rate mining stock ETFs. The largest such ETF, XME, the State Street SPDR S&P Metals & Mining ETF, is rated at 5 (Strong Buy). While not focused only on precious metal stocks, this is at least an indication that our model sees gold and silver continuing to outpace returns posted by most stock market index ETFs. Top holdings aluminum giant Alcoa Corp (AA) and Canadian silver producer Hecla (HL) Mining are both rated 5 while large cap global miner Freeport McMoran was upgraded recently to 4 from 3. Another notable upgrade was financial services giant Charles Schwab Corp (SCHW) rising from 4 to 5, consistent with the fact that XLF, Finance Select Sector SPDR, remains on top of all 11 ETFs in that category with a 5 rating.
This is our last weekly update for 2025. We wish all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2026!
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