Stocks hurtled past tariffs, a government shutdown and AI fears.
December 31, 2025, 4:17 PM
The stock market recorded stellar year-end returns when markets closed on Wednesday for the last time in 2025. The performance marked three straight years of double-digit gains.
The S&P 500 finished the year up 16%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed 19%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed out 2025 up 13%. A dip in each of the indexes on Wednesday left markets lower in the year’s final trading session.
The major indexes each notched a record high in 2025, hurtling past tariffs, a government shutdown and fears of a bubble in artificial intelligence.
Analysts attributed the rise of share prices this year to overlapping trends: Resilient corporate earnings, a series of interest-rate cuts meant to boost hiring and near-inexhaustible enthusiasm for AI.
Chip giant Nvidia, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, ended the year up 39%.
Tariffs, which threatened to derail markets in the spring, eased into an afterthought over the latter half of the year.
People walk by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 30, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A day after tariffs were announced on April 2, major stock indexes shed about $3.1 trillion in value. The selloff amounted to the biggest one-day decline in markets since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Days later, a major swathe of the tariffs were suspended, sending the market to one of its largest ever single-day increases.
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«While tariffs remain a source of uncertainty, markets are pricing in limited disruption,» JPMorgan Wealth Management said in an investor note last month.
Even as markets proved resilient, the gains this year remained concentrated in a handful of tech giants, known as the magnificent seven: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia. In September, worries over AI threw cold water on those stocks, causing their prices to waver.
In November, blockbuster earnings from Nvidia helped rebuke AI fears and shake markets out of the doldrums. Still, some analysts have continued to voice concern about the market’s dependence on AI, as tech firms face increased pressure to turn massive capital investment into profits.
