Thanksgiving is over, the turkey coma is fading, and most of us are already dreading Monday. But for anyone who keeps even half an eye on the markets, there’s something quietly dramatic happening right now that feels a lot bigger than leftover pie debates.
The Nasdaq Composite – that high-flying index we’ve all watched rocket higher for most of 2025 – is staring at its first negative month since April. Seven straight winning months. Gone, potentially, in the final days of November.
And honestly? It feels like the moment in a movie when the music drops out and everyone realizes the party might actually be winding down.
A Holiday Week That Actually Mattered
Most Thanksgiving weeks are sleepy affairs. Volume dries up, traders sneak out early, and the biggest move usually comes from someone accidentally fat-fingering a trade while reaching for more gravy.
Not this year.
Even with the market closed Thursday and set to shut at 1 p.m. Friday, the undercurrent has been impossible to ignore. The major averages spent the first half of November sliding, then staged a sharp rebound mid-month, only to give back gains again as doubts about artificial intelligence spending returned with a vengeance.
By Wednesday’s close, here’s where things stood:
- The Dow was basically flat for the month – its own six-month win streak in jeopardy.
- The S&P 500 sat slightly in the red.
- The Nasdaq? Down around 2% with just one trading day left. That’s not a crash, but context matters.
In a year when “buy the dip” has worked almost flawlessly, watching the dip actually stick around for more than a week feels… weird. Almost unnatural.
Why November Turned Ugly
Let’s be real – the cracks started showing weeks ago.
Every time a major tech name reported earnings that were “good but not good enough,” the stock got punished. Investors who spent two years telling themselves that spending $50 billion on data centers was obviously smart forever suddenly started asking uncomfortable questions.
Questions like:
- When exactly does all this AI infrastructure start making real money?
- Are we in another dot-com style bubble?
- If interest rates stay “higher for longer,” does that change the math on these mega-cap growth stories?
Those questions didn’t appear out of nowhere. They’ve been bubbling under the surface for months. November just happened to be the month when everyone decided to voice them at the same time.
“The mood shifted from ‘everything AI is unstoppable’ to ‘maybe we need to see actual profits pretty soon.’”
– A portfolio manager I spoke with this week
He’s not wrong. I’ve been around long enough to remember when “eyeballs” justified any valuation in 1999. Today it’s “GPU cycles” and “inference capacity.” Different decade, same human psychology.
The Tech Pullback in Numbers
Some of the damage has been brutal if you owned the wrong names.
The so-called Magnificent Seven – that group that carried the market higher for most of the past two years – have had a rough November. A few are down double digits from their peaks. Others are treading water.
Semiconductor stocks, the picks-and-shovels play of the AI gold rush, got absolutely crushed earlier in the month before bouncing hard. The volatility has been wild even by 2025 standards.
And yet… the broader economy keeps chugging along. Jobless claims remain low. Consumer spending hasn’t collapsed. Corporate earnings outside of tech are mostly fine.
It’s almost as if the market is experiencing two completely different realities at once.
The Case for a Year-End Rally
Here’s where things get interesting.
Every seasoned investor I know is looking at this November weakness the same way you look at a Black Friday sale – slightly chaotic, a little stressful, but ultimately full of deals if you know where to look.
History is actually pretty clear on this. When the market digests a hot streak like we’ve had, a period of consolidation or mild pullback in November often sets the stage for a strong December.
Think about it:
- Portfolio managers who are underweight after missing the rally suddenly have permission to chase.
- Tax-loss harvesting creates artificial selling pressure that reverses in January.
- Cash on the sidelines (and there’s still a mountain of it) hates missing the traditional year-end melt-up.
- Bad news gets ignored in December the way good news gets ignored in bear markets.
I’m not saying it’s guaranteed. Nothing ever is. But the setup feels familiar if you’ve been doing this for a while.
What Thursday Night Futures Are Really Telling Us
As I write this Thursday evening, stock futures are basically flat. Dow futures up ten points. S&P and Nasdaq futures hugging the unchanged line.
Boring? Sure. But boring can be beautiful after the rollercoaster we’ve ridden this month.
Flat futures on a holiday night tell me a few things:
- There’s no panic. No one is rushing to sell into a closed market.
- There’s no FOMO either. No one is frantically buying because they’re afraid of missing the next leg up.
- The market is catching its breath.
In my experience, these quiet moments after turbulence are when the smart money starts positioning for what’s next.
Where We Go From Here
Friday will be telling, even with the early close. A quiet drift lower would confirm November’s red finish for the Nasdaq. A late-day bounce – especially in tech – could flip the script entirely.
Either way, I suspect the bigger story is already written.
We needed this pause. The market was running too hot, too fast, on a narrative that was starting to feel a little too perfect. A reality check was overdue.
Now we get to find out what’s real – which companies can actually turn AI hype into profits, which leadership teams deserve the premium valuations they’ve enjoyed, and which parts of this bull market have real staying power.
That’s not scary. That’s healthy.
And if history is any guide, the investors who use this November weakness to add to high-quality names at better prices are the ones who’ll be raising a glass when the closing bell rings on December 31st.
So yeah, the seven-month winning streak might end this week. But sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward.
Pass the leftovers. I’ve got a feeling December is going to taste pretty sweet.
