Wall Street ends lower on first trading session of 2025; Tesla weighs

U.S. stocks finished lower on the first trading day of the year after opening the session higher.

Wall Street ends lower on first trading session of 2025; Tesla weighs

• Summary
• Companies

• Weekly jobless claims at 211,000, below estimates
• Tesla slides after deliveries data
• Crypto stocks rise along with Bitcoin
• Energy follows oil higher on China optimism
• Indexes down: Dow 0.36%, S&P 0.22%, Nasdaq 0.16%

NEW YORK, Jan 2 – Wall Street see-sawed to a lower close on Thursday amid choppy trading, as investors embarked on the new year facing the cross-currents of solid labor market data, a rising dollar and tumbling Tesla shares.

All three major U.S. stocks ended the session in negative territory, a reversal of an earlier rally but off session lows.

“We had some macro news but somewhat mixed and you know we have a very strong dollar today,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York. “There are a few hurdles over the next couple of weeks and those are next Friday’s employment data and the beginning of fourth quarter earnings.”

“In the short term, we’re looking at choppiness and a struggle for direction until we get those hurdles out of the way,” Cardillo added.

Shares of Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab sank 6.1% after reporting its first annual drop in deliveries, as incentives failed to stem a decline in demand for its aging line-up of electric vehicles.

A report from the Labor Department showed initial and continuing claims for unemployment benefits both fell last week, supporting the narrative of a solid jobs market and adding weight to the possibility that the U.S. central bank could let its key interest rate stand at this month’s policy meeting.

Looking past uncertainties regarding the pace of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, policies to be enacted by the incoming Donald Trump administration and various hot spots of geopolitical unrest, market participants chose to focus on the strength of the United States economy.

Wall Street’s main indexes notched double-digit gains in 2024, with the benchmark S&P 500 recording its best two-year run since 1997-1998. Those gains were driven by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate cuts in three-and-a-half years, the ongoing artificial intelligence boom and expectations of pro-business policies from the incoming Trump administration.