These 5 charts hint at where stocks might go next after a wild November for the market

These 5 charts hint at where stocks might go next after a wild November for the market Joseph Adinolfi Mon, December 1, 2025 at 1:00 AM GMT+8 8 min read In this article:

^GSPC -0.53% ^DJI -0.90%

U.S. stocks capped off a rocky November with a five-day sprint higher that saw the S&P 500 narrowly avoid a monthly loss. - MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto

November historically has been a strong month for the U.S. stock market. This year’s gains didn’t come easy.

After finishing October in record territory, major U.S. equity indexes kicked off November in the red with the worst five-day stretch to start the month since 2008, Dow Jones Market Data showed. During the weeks that followed, selling pressure didn’t let up, as stocks tied to the artificial intelligence trade came under pressure. Concerns about historically lofty valuations and the sustainability of the data-center build-out were widely blamed, along with growing suspicions that the Federal Reserve might refrain from another interest-rate cut in December.

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See: November’s stock-market pullback could be a speed bump. Or possibly a hint of something worse to come.

Things turned around in the final week of the month, with the S&P 500 index SPX and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA tallying their best week-of-Thanksgiving performance in years.

Both indexes erased all of their losses from earlier in November in the final trading session of the month on Friday. Meanwhile, the small-cap Russell 2000 index RUT went on a tear this past week, rising 5.5%, its best since Nov. 8, 2024, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Only the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP among the major U.S. equity indexes finished the month in the red, falling 1.8% and snapping a seven-month winning streak.

Other corners of the market saw even bigger losses. Speculative stocks, including those featured in indexes of the most heavily shorted names in the U.S., came under pressure, as did bitcoin, BTCUSD which along with other cryptocurrencies were down $1.2 trillion in value in mid-November. While speculative trades pared their losses at the tail-end of November, many were still sitting on painful losses since October.

“Investors have gotten a gut-check for the first time all year — other than the tariff tantrum,” said Aaron Clark, a portfolio manager at GW&K Investment Management, in an interview with MarketWatch. “Since then, we’ve been straight up and to the right. This has been the first test of the bull thesis.”

Yet investors remained on edge. The Cboe Volatility Index CBOE has retreated back below its long-term average, but finished the week at 16.35, still elevated considering the S&P 500 was within striking distance of its record higher. CNN’s Fear & Greed Index was at 24, in “extreme fear” territory.

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Given the past week’s low trading volume, investors will be watching how the market behaves during the first week of December, when more traders will be back at their desks. That will provide a clearer picture regarding whether the rally can continue into the end of the year. According to Fawad Razaqzada, a market analyst at StoneX, many of the concerns that weighed on markets in November haven’t been resolved.

Here are five charts that might offer some clues about where the market is heading next.

Investors pick AI sides

When Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL unveiled its Gemini 3 large language model earlier this month, it helped breath new life into the AI trade.

It also caused AI-related stocks to split into two camps. Suddenly, investors were favoring companies associated with the Google parent — most notably Broadcom Inc., AVGO which worked with Google to design its Tensor Processing Units, a specialized processor used to train and power Gemini 3. At the same time, shares of companies associated with OpenAI sold off.

Tech-focused investor Coatue Management created two baskets — one for “team Google,” and another for “team OpenAI.” The chart below shows how their performance has diverged over the past couple of weeks.

“In six months, you’ve gone from Google being an also-ran who, in theory, was going to lose their paid search business, to now being the leader in driverless technology with Waymo, as well as having what people believe is the best LLM — or at least the LLM that, right now, is at the front of the pack,” said John Grimley, founder of Independence Square Advisors, in an interview with MarketWatch.

Google’s TPUs were seen as threatening Nvidia Corp.’s NVDA stranglehold on the market for chips needed to train and power large-language models.

“They’ve found a new way to build compute without paying huge fees for Nvidia’s chips,” Grimley added.

Aside from Alphabet and Broadcom, other members of “Team Google” include Celestica Inc. CLS, Lumentum Holdings Inc. LITE and TTM Technologies Inc. TTMI, according to Coatue’s groupings.

Meanwhile, “Team OpenAI” includes Nvidia, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, SoftBank Group Corp. SFTBY , Oracle Corp. ORCL, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD and CoreWeave Inc. CRWV

Investors appear to be quickly taking notice. The S&P 500 on Tuesday rose by 0.9%, while Nvidia Corp. fell by 2.6%. That marked the biggest gain for the S&P 500 on a day where Nvidia fell by 2.5% or more since July 1, 2022, according to Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group. This may be a sign that the AI trade can keep powering further gains for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, even if Nvidia is no longer alone in playing a leading role.

Crucial Fed decision

Whether the Fed will deliver another interest-rate cut in December has becoming an increasingly critical question for the market.

Comments from several top Fed officials, including Fed governor Christopher Waller, have helped revive expectations for another rate-cut in December. Reports that White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has emerged as the front-runner to be the next chairman of the Fed also appeared to help keep the rally going this week.

“Stocks are celebrating the likelihood of a December rate cut, as it’s becoming clear that the labor market is the priority for the Federal Reserve, and another rate cut would help to protect against any further cooling of the job market,” said Paul Stanley, chief investment officer at Granite Bay Wealth Management, in commentary shared with MarketWatch via email.

More stocks join rally

As the S&P 500 was approaching its most recent record high in late October, Wall Street was growing concerned about the latest round of gains being powered primarily by a few megacap technology stocks.

The share of advancing stocks, or breadth, had started to taper off even before the S&P 500 hit its Oct. 28 record finish. The percentage of S&P 500 stocks trading above their 200-day moving average fell to 47.31% on Nov. 20, the lowest level since June.

The ratio has since started to climb, with the rally over the past few days helping push healthcare stocks and other previously struggling sectors to new highs. As of the past week, more than 54% of S&P 500 stocks were above their long-term averages.

Carson Group’s Detrick notes that breadth often leads price, so signs of improving participation mean the broader indexes will likely continue to climb in the short term.

Insider buying picks up

Back in October, Vicker’s Stock Research’s ratio of insider selling and insider buying activity for all companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange soared to north of 27, the highest level on record, as the below chart shows. That suggested a surge of selling by executives and other insiders,

That ratio since has come down to 2.5 as of Nov. 24. Jasper Hellweg, a securities analyst of healthcare and insider trends at Argus Research, which owns Vicker’s, said the ratio has little predictive power at these levels. But the drop does suggest that insiders have increasingly been buying their own shares.

Insiders can have many reasons for selling shares. That’s why the index isn’t always a helpful leading indicator. Someone could be raising money to pay a tax bill, for example, or for another notable expense. But there’s typically only one reason for buying: A view that the investment will appreciate in value.

Foreign buyers pile into stocks

After President Trump’s tariff fight sent global markets reeling back in April, concerns emerged that foreign investors might start to shun U.S. assets. That gave birth to fears about a “Sell America” trade that could rock U.S. stocks and bonds, as well as the dollar.

So far, worries of a widespread boycott of U.S. assets appears overblown. U.S. stocks quickly rebounded from their losses in April. Moreover, data tracked by the Treasury Department showed foreign investors continued pouring money into U.S. markets. Inflows into stocks hit a record pace of $646.8 billion in the 12 months through September.

“These numbers clearly refute the widely held view that foreign investors are dumping U.S. securities and bailing out of the dollar DXY,” said Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, in an email exchange with MarketWatch.

“In fact, they remain aggressive buyers of U.S. securities, suggesting that this year’s selloff in the dollar was a correction in a bull market.”

Ken Jimenez contributed

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