Where is the market headed?
As the final day of the year concludes, the market has delivered a decent performance, jumping up to end 2025 on a positive note.
Reflecting on the overall journey of 2025, there are many positive blessings to count. The stock markets have consolidated effectively over the last 15 to 16 months, suggesting that the environment is now nearer than farther from the next rally. Gold and silver performed exceptionally well during this calendar year, providing strong support to allocated portfolios.
This period has reinforced the relevance of asset allocation for most market investors. Additionally, real estate has continued to move along quite nicely. Overall, 2025 has removed much of the fluff and extreme hot money from the markets, making the landscape lean and mean for the path ahead. Consequently, 2026 is starting out on a very good note.
Market Overview
An analysis of the charts for the day shows Nifty up by 0.74 percent, placing it just a stone’s throw away from a new all-time high. Momentum across short, mid, and long-term trends has turned positive for Nifty, making it a primary area to find trades for longs.
Nifty Next 50
Nifty Junior also saw a 1 percent jump, and a head and shoulders pattern is currently forming, which could lead to a very sharp move. Short, mid, and long-term outlooks for Nifty Junior also appear positive.
Nifty Mid and Small Cap
Mid-cap and small-cap indices also experienced jumps, with all indices closing above the two-day high middle, which is a strong indicator for positive short-term movement. Small caps erased all losses from the previous four days.
Bank Nifty
Bank Nifty rose nicely by 0.69 percent. Across the board, the last day of the calendar year provided very good moves.
GOLD
In contrast, gold is looking down and is currently negative in the short and mid-term, though its long-term trend remains positive. There may be more room for gold to move lower before it trends upward again.
SILVER
Silver is performing better than gold due to its recent run, though its short-term charts are not currently positive.
Advance Decline Ratio
Market breadth was very strong today with 414 advances, a level not seen in many weeks.
Heat Maps
The heat map was largely green, with only a few IT stocks and Bajaj Finance losing ground. Within the Nifty Next 50 heat map, Hindustan Zinc and Adani Power saw some downward movement, but the rest of the map remained green. Oil and gas companies moved up rapidly, and Graphite emerged as the mover of the day with a 9 percent gain on heavy trading volume. Graphite, along with HEG and Rain, are commodity-based stocks catching up quickly from recent bottoms.
Mover Of The Day
Sectoral Overview
Sectoral trends were very positive for oil and gas, which saw a remarkable gain of 2.6 percent. Public sector enterprise stocks rose 1.7 percent, while commodities, media, energy, and metals all gained approximately 1.5 percent. Nifty Metals notably hit a new all-time high. Central PSEs and defense also looked good, while defensive IT stocks took a backseat today.
Looking at the full 2025 calendar year change, PSU Banks clocked the highest returns at 30.4 percent. Metals held the second position at 29 percent, followed by Autos at 23 percent. These three sectors accounted for most of the gains this year, while Media, Real Estate, and IT lagged the most over the last 12 months.
Sector of the Day
Nifty Oil & Gas Index
In the oil and gas sector, almost two months of losses were recovered in just one session, with HPCL, Gujarat Gas, GSPL, BPCL, and Oil India all performing strongly.
U.S. Market
In the US markets, there were some downward moves recently. The Russell 2000 fell 0.8 percent, and the Dow Jones, NASDAQ 100, and S&P 500 also declined. While many analysts predict a difficult year ahead for US markets, those predictions have not yet fully materialized.
Stocks such as Palantir, Gilead, IBM, Tesla, and Goldman Sachs lost ground recently. It should be noted that some of these stocks may be included in Weekend Investing US strategies, so this information is not a recommendation. Within the NASDAQ 100, Nvidia saw a marginal drop, while Apple, Google, and Microsoft remained quiet. Meta saw some gains while Tesla experienced losses.
Tweet Of The Day
A unique trend is visible in the gold futures market regarding the percentage change gap between current and next-series contracts on the MCX (see the image below). While this gap is usually around 1 percent for a two-monthly cycle, the gap between the January and March contracts is currently between 2.5 and 3 percent. This high rollover cost for gold longs suggests either a very high expectation for rising gold prices, a shortage of physical delivery in the market, or a potential warning sign that too many FOMO traders are entering the market. Silver does not currently show this same spread.
