US stocks sank on Monday while bitcoin's (BTC-USD) slump deepened, as Wall Street's strong late-November rebound looked set to hit a speed bump on the first trading day of December.

Tech led the retreat, with the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) down around 1% and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropping roughly 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) slid around 0.6%, after the blue-chip benchmark led Wall Street indexes to a fifth day of gains on Friday.

All the "Magnificent Seven" megacap stocks except Amazon (AMZN) pulled back, led by falls of around 1% for Nvidia (NVDA), Meta (META), and Tesla (TSLA).

Meanwhile, bitcoin fell sharply, losing nearly 6% in another sign that markets are kicking December off in a risk-off mood. The leading cryptocurrency sank below $85,000 a token on Monday morning, extending a weeks-long slide, before bouncing to trade above that level.

December is typically a strong month for stocks, but strategists say the so-called Santa Claus rally may not happen this year after a string of events — not least President Trump's tariff push — kept uncertainty high. That has led stocks to buck the usual seasonal trends throughout 2025, analysts say.

Focus is still on the Federal Reserve's path for interest rates, even as over 85% of bets ride on a quarter-point reduction at policymakers' meeting next week. The Thanksgiving week rally was fueled in large part by rising hopes for a cut and lower borrowing costs, on the back of supportive comments from Fed officials. But the central bank has now entered a blackout ahead of its gathering.

That puts the spotlight on economic data to set expectations for rates, as releases continue to flow back to normal post-government shutdown. Monday brings a reading on November manufacturing activity, ahead of updates on services activity and the jobs market in coming days. But the highlight comes Friday, with the delayed arrival of September's Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge.

Wall Street is also bracing for a potential change of leadership at the Fed, after a year of Trump butting heads with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Trump said Sunday he has made his choice for replacing Powell. Trump didn't give a name, though White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett is seen as most likely.

Barrick Mining Corporation (B) said Monday that it's exploring an IPO of its North American gold assets, sending shares of the Canadian miner up 3% ahead of the opening bell.

Barrick said it would maintain a significant controlling interest in the new company should it spin off its subsidiary as a publicly traded entity.

The new company would control Barrick’s interests in Nevada Gold Mines and the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic, which are both joint ventures with Newmont (NEM), as well as Barrick’s wholly owned Fourmile gold discovery in Nevada. Newmont stock also rose in premarket trading.

The announcement comes after activist investor Elliott Investment Management reportedly built a sizable stake in the company in November and pushed for a breakup. In September, Mark Hill took over as Barrick's CEO, as rising costs in its North American mines and the company remained locked in a dispute with Mali's government.

Nvidia (NVDA) announced Monday that it invested $2 billion in Synopsys (SNPS) stock to deepen the companies' partnership.

Nvidia shares fell 1.5% in premarket trading as a risk-off mood swept markets, while Synopsys stock jumped over 7% on the news. If that holds through the day, Synopsys is on track to wipe away about half of its year-to-date losses.

Synopsys, which designs tools and offers services to companies, is partnering with Nvidia on engineering and marketing activities, including compute-intensive applications, advanced agentic AI engineering, and joint go-to-market initiatives, according to a press release.

Nvidia paid $414.79 per share for Synopsys's common stock. The AI titan is coming off a rough November, with shares down 11% over the past month. Year to date, however, Nvidia stock has returned 31%.

Crypto stocks took a hit in premarket trading on Monday as a sell-off in cryptocurrencies gained steam.

Strategy (MSTR), which helped pioneer the bitcoin treasury model for businesses, declined by over 5%. Year to date, the Michael Saylor-led firm is down 38%. Meanwhile, Coinbase (COIN) dropped by 5%, and Robinhood (HOOD) slid 4%.

The stocks fell in sympathy with cryptocurrencies, which sold off across the board.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell more than 6% and briefly traded below $85,000. Ether (ETH-USD) shed nearly 7% to trade around $2,800 per token. Ripple's XRP (XRP-USD) dropped 7% to around $2.

Selling accelerated in the early morning hours after the DeFi platform Yearn Finance said it experienced an \\"incident\\" in its yETH LST stableswap pool. Yearn posted on X that the hack led to a $9 million loss.

Bloomberg reports:

Treasurys started the post-Thanksgiving week on the back foot as a slide in Japanese debt spilled over into bond markets globally.

The yield on US 10-year notes (^TNX) rose three basis points to 4.04%, following a jump in the Japanese equivalent to the highest since 2008 on the prospect of a Bank of Japan interest-rate hike later this month. That also pushed up rates on bonds from Europe to New Zealand.

Japan’s two-year borrowing costs — among the most sensitive to changes in monetary policy — climbed above 1% for the first time in 17 years. The move was fueled by BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda talking up the prospects for a rate hike, leading money markets to lift the chance of a move on Dec. 19 to around 80%, from less than 25% one week ago.

Traders in US debt remain sensitive to BOJ policy given its control of the spigot on the flow of Japanese yen liquidity globally. Higher rates in Japan may entice domestic investors to keep more funds in local government bonds, instead of higher-yielding assets overseas such as Treasuries.

Read more here.

Economic data: S&P Global US manufacturing PMI (November final reading); ISM manufacturing (November)

Earnings: Credo Technology Group (CRDO), MongoDB (MDB), New Fortress Energy (NFE)

Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed over the weekend and early this morning:

Chanos warns of debt risks tied to Nvidia AI chips

'I don't know if we'll get that Santa rally'

US, UK set to seal deal on zero-rate pharma tariffs

Trump says he's made his Fed chair pick to replace Powell

Bitcoin plunges to below $86,000 in risk-off start to December

Silver jumps 2% to record high as roaring rally outpaces gold

SoftBank founder: 'I was crying to sell Nvidia shares'

Treasurys fall as Japan sell-off ripples through bond markets

Yahoo Finance's Jake Conley takes a look at the key events for markets this week.

He reports:

The final month of the year gets underway on Monday, and investors will be looking for a smoother month to round out the year after choppy November trading saw the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) snap a seven-month winning streak while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) moved back to within 1% of a record high.

... In the week ahead, investor focus will remain on the odds of a rate cut at the Federal Reserve's December meeting, with traders currently predicting an 86.9% chance of a quarter-point cut. The Fed entered its mandatory blackout period on Saturday, marking the start of a quiet week and a half before the Federal Open Market Committee meets on Dec. 9-10.

Reports this past week also suggested that the Trump administration is getting closer to landing on a candidate to succeed Jerome Powell as chair of the Fed, with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, appearing to have emerged as the frontrunner for the nomination.

The economic calendar will continue a slow normalization after the 43-day US government shutdown threw data collection into chaos, with private reports on US manufacturing activity, service sector activity, and ADP's monthly private payrolls report featured.

On the corporate earnings side, bargain retailers Dollar Tree (DLTR), Dollar General (DG), and Five Below (FIVE) are all reporting, while Salesforce (CRM) and CrowdStrike (CRWD) will feature from the tech industry.

Read more here.

South Korea's largest e-retailer Coupang Inc. (CPNG) stock fell 8% in premarket trading on Monday following a massive data leak. This latest break caps what is set to be a record year for online leaks in the country, highlighting weaknesses in Seoul’s cyber defenses.

New Fortress Energy (NFE) stock soared 22% before the bell on Monday. The liquefied natural gas supplier, which has faced questions over its rising debt, had a contract approved with Puerto Rico regulators late Friday.

Strategy (MSTR) stock fell 4% during premarket trading on Monday. The software company, which is one of the largest investors of bitcoin has suffered due to the crypto selloff.

Silver (SI=F) jumped nearly 2% to a fresh all-time peak on Monday as traders eyed tight supply and optimism for a US interest rate cut in December.

The metal was trading above $58 an ounce, having surged almost 6% on Friday to a record high.

Bloomberg reports:

[Silver] has climbed for six consecutive days and doubled in value this year, outpacing a roughly 60% rally in gold (GC=F).

A record amount of the metal flowed into London in October to ease a historic squeeze in the world’s biggest silver trading hub, but this has put other centers under pressure. Inventories in warehouses linked to the Shanghai Futures Exchange recently hit their lowest in nearly a decade, and the cost of borrowing the metal over one month remains elevated.

Both metals have also got a boost from increased expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. .... The release of economic data delayed by the US government’s six-week shutdown has also supported the case for lower borrowing costs, which typically benefit non-yielding precious metals.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal reports:

The Santa Claus rally is usually one of Wall Street’s favorite holiday traditions. Stocks tend to grind higher after Thanksgiving, volatility fades, and December often delivers one of the strongest months of the year.

This year, strategists say, Santa may not show up.

“None [of the months this year] have behaved the way they have seasonally,\\" Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance.

And there are plenty of reasons why. The year has offered reminder after reminder that this isn’t a normal market cycle: The DeepSeek meltdown in February; President Trump’s surprise tariff announcement in April; and months of hand-wringing over AI valuations.

Those helped create a roller-coaster ride for investors that pushed stocks to record highs, before volatility resurfaced again in recent weeks.

This has been a year when the traditional playbook hasn’t worked because the rules of the game are changing in real time. AI has introduced a level of disruption and uncertainty that strategists say is fundamentally different from anything in the past decade.

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

Oil rose as a key pipeline linking Kazakh fields to Russia’s Black Sea coast halted loading after one of its three moorings was damaged in an attack over the weekend.

Brent (BZ=F) traded above $63. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium carries most of Kazakhstan’s crude exports, which have averaged 1.6 million barrels a day so far this year.

Ukraine hasn’t commented on the incident at the CPC facility, although it confirmed separate attacks on an oil refinery and tankers over the weekend.

The incident came after the OPEC+ producer-group led by Saudi Arabia reiterated a three-month plan to halt output hikes in the first quarter of next year. OPEC+ again said the move reflected weaker seasonal market conditions. A major surplus is expected in the early part of next year.

Oil posted a fourth consecutive monthly drop in November as expectations for a swelling surplus weighed on the outlook, with the International Energy Agency forecasting a record glut in 2026. Still, geopolitical tensions from Russia to Venezuela — where President Trump warned airspace should be considered closed over the weekend, add to the bullish risks for prices.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Myles Udland reports:

The three-year anniversary of ChatGPT's release was on Sunday.

For investors and the corporate world, a lot more than three years' worth of change has followed.

Stock prices have soared. Workflows have changed. Staffing needs have been radically altered. A massive domestic infrastructure buildout is underway.

The economy has become increasingly K-shaped, with the distance widening between the financial haves and have-nots in both the corporate and consumer realms.

The transformed state of the economy and markets is remarkable on its own merits. But against the backdrop of the markets from which this artificial intelligence boom emerged, the turnaround is even more impressive.

Simply put, ChatGPT didn't just catalyze the biggest technological boom in a generation; it offered a catalyst to turn around one of the lousiest market environments investors had been dealing with since the financial crisis.

... And it is with this context that the doubt which has seemed to dog this bull run becomes more explicable.

Read more here in this takeaway from Morning Brief.

Cryptocurrencies fell early Monday morning as a week of sell-off continued despite appearing to stablize at the end of last week.

Bloomberg reports:

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) slid as much as 4.3% to below $88,000 in early Asia trading, while Ether dropped 6% to below $2,900, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The crypto market is on shaky ground after a weeks-long selloff that began when some $19 billion in levered bets were wiped out in early October, just days after Bitcoin set an all-time high of $126,251. A let-up in the selling pressure saw the original cryptocurrency regain ground last week, rising to above $90,000.

After the latest bout of selling on Monday, traders are bracing for bigger moves lower.

“It’s a risk off start to December,” said Sean McNulty, APAC derivatives trading lead at FalconX. “The biggest concern is the meagre inflows into Bitcoin exchange traded funds and absence of dip buyers. We expect the structural headwinds to continue this month. We are watching $80,000 on Bitcoin as the next key support level.”

Read more here.