Yes, November was a very fine month for stocks.
The Standard & Poor's 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both closed at records and had their best monthly performances — 5.7% and 7.5%, respectively — in a year.
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The Nasdaq Composite, up 6.21% for the month, missed a new record close by just 81 points, or 0.4%. The November gain was its best since May.
Here's a bit more to know about the stock market, which many players see heading higher in December and well into 2025.
Related: Key analyst outlines patterns in holiday stock moves
Top S&P 500 winners for November
Bottom 10 S&P 500 losers for November
Top 5 Dow stocks in November
Bottom 5 Dow stocks in November
Related: Nvidia stock extends November gains as investors bet on 2025 AI dominance
Two notes about Tesla
First: Tesla is not among the Dow winners because it is not a Dow stock, even if Tesla ended November with a $1.11 trillion market capitalization. And CEO Elon Musk is evolving into a major player in Washington.
Second: Tesla's first-quarter stock-price decline, caused by worries about falling sales, was 29.3%.
But four of the so-called Magnificent 7 stocks are indeed Dow components: Apple ( AAPL ) , Amazon.com ( AMZN ) , Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) .
The other three Mag 7 components are Tesla, Meta Platforms ( META ) and Google parent Alphabet ( GOOGL )
Market momentum has slipped a little
One can see this in the number of record closes in the S&P 500 in 2024.
The benchmark index closed at a record six times in November, up from four in October and five in September, according to S&P Dow Jones, which runs the S&P 500, the Dow and a host of other indexes. But there were seven record closes in January and eight each in February and March.
The earlier records reflected just how crazy the market was for technology stocks, especially Nvidia. The AI chip giant rose 82.5% in the first quarter and 36.7% in the second. It fell in the third quarter and is up 13.4% so far in the fourth quarter.
More Wall Street Analysts:
For now, tech is no longer king
In the first half of 2024, the Technology Sector SPDR Fund ( XLK ) was up 17.5%, tops among exchange-traded funds that mirror the 11 sectors of the S&P 500.
The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF ( SMH ) was up a whopping 49%. As of Nov. 29, the SMH ETF was down 7% from the end of June — but still up 38.6% for the year. Nvidia is the ETF's biggest holding at 22.2% of assets. Taiwan Semiconductor ( TSM ) was 13.2% of the fund's holdings.
Leading the market in the second half are financials, consumer discretionaries (which include Tesla) and utilities. The latter group is attracting lots of interest and capital because investors believe the companies will be investing billions for new capacity to power energy-hungry data centers coming on line.
Let us praise the small caps
For the past few years, the Russell 2000 Index, which focuses on small-cap stocks, has been a weak link in the stock market. In November, however, the Russell rose 10.8%. It outperformed, well, the S&P 500, the Dow, the Nasdaq Composite and even the high-flying Nasdaq-100 Index.
The iShares Russell 2000 exchange-traded fund ( IWM ) , which is built to look like the Russell index, was up 11% in November. Again, better than the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ( SPY ) and a host of ETFs that mimic the big indexes.
To be sure, on a year-to-date basis, IWM is still lagging the other funds. But smart money appears to be finding opportunity.
Related: Veteran fund manager sees world of pain coming for stocks