{"id":3778,"date":"2010-12-29T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T18:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/market-finishes-higher-sp-500-headed-for-best-december-in-two-decades\/3775\/"},"modified":"2010-12-29T18:17:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T18:17:00","slug":"market-finishes-higher-sp-500-headed-for-best-december-in-two-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/market-finishes-higher-sp-500-headed-for-best-december-in-two-decades\/3778\/","title":{"rendered":"Market Finishes Higher; S&amp;P 500 Headed for Best December in Two Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Equity market finished higher on thin volume. Market has seen a strong rally in December, with the <a href=\"https:\/\/stockmarketwatch.com\/markets\/sp500\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"snp500 today\">S&amp;P 500<\/a> heading for its December in almost two decades. Investors\u2019 confidence has been boosted by an improving economy, strong corporate earnings and a rise in M&amp;A activity.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-3778\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/markets\/dowjones\/today.aspx\">Dow Jones<\/a> closed 0.09% higher at 11,585.38, the S&amp;P 500 closed 0.10% higher at 1,259.78 and the <a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/markets\/nasdaq\/today.aspx\">Nasdaq<\/a> closed 0.15% higher at 2,666.93. Energy stocks were the best performers in the S&amp;P 500 today, followed by Basic Materials stocks. All sectors in the S&amp;P 500 ended the day in green. Energy stocks climbed 1.07% today, while Basic Materials stocks finished 0.84% higher.<\/p>\n<p>The gains in the Basic Materials sector were led by rare-earth element stocks. Among the major rare-earth element stocks that climbed in trading today were Molycorp Inc. (<a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock.aspx?stock=mcp\">NYSE: MCP<\/a>), which ended the day 6.76% higher, and Rare Element Resources Ltd. (<a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock.aspx?stock=ree\">AMEX: REE<\/a>), which ended the day 14.30% higher at $14.79.<\/p>\n<p>Potash Corp. (<a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock.aspx?stock=pot\">NYSE: POT<\/a>) was the other big gainer in trading today. Shares of Potash ended the day 5.12% higher at $152.07.<\/p>\n<p>Other major gainers in today\u2019s trading included BJ\u2019s Wholesale Club Inc. (<a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock.aspx?stock=bj\">NYSE: BJ),<\/a> which ended the day 7.08% higher. Shares of the retailer rallied after reports that the company may be acquired by a private equity firm.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:5px;margin-bottom:20px;font-size:11pt;\">&laquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/thestockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/\">Return to Stock Market News<\/a> &laquo; <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Equity market finished higher on thin volume. Market has seen a strong rally in December, with the S&amp;P 500 heading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"rank_math_schema_Article":[],"rank_math_focus_keyword":[],"rank_math_description":[],"financial_data_references":[],"stock_symbols_mentioned":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[72,343,396,632],"class_list":["post-3778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-market-update","tag-pot","tag-cree","tag-bjri","tag-mcp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}