🚀 Stock future steady

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. Stock futures were steady Sunday night. Traders enter December on the heels of a strong rebound week, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow up 3.7%, 4.9% and 3.2%, respectively, helping offset November’s volatility, which saw the Nasdaq slip 1.5% amid renewed worries over stretched AI valuations. Seasonality is adding to the optimism: historically, the S&P 500 gains over 1% in December, its third-best month since 1950, and analysts say improving market breadth and rising odds of a December rate cut are boosting sentiment.

2. Silver has surged 71% this year, outpacing gold’s 54%, as shrinking mine output, emptying London vaults, and record demand from India collided with rising industrial use in EVs, AI components, and solar manufacturing. Prices hit an all-time high of $54.47 per ounce in October amid a supply squeeze so severe that some buyers resorted to airlifting silver and overnight borrowing costs spiked to an annualized 200%. Analysts say this rally is different from past peaks in 1980 and 2011, noting that years of declining production, global tariffs, and India’s post-harvest buying spree have flipped the market from surplus to deficit. With EVs already using up to 50 grams of silver—and future solid-state batteries potentially needing a kilo per car—experts argue the “Devil’s metal” may stay elevated as it straddles both precious and industrial demand in an increasingly electrified world.

3. Small, family-run monument makers are facing an existential squeeze as rising cremation rates slash demand for traditional gravestones just as Trump-era tariffs dramatically inflate granite costs, with some duties jumping from 29% to nearly 60% in a year. Businesses like Rome Monument and Milano Monuments say they’re absorbing the higher prices rather than passing them on to grieving families. Still, unpredictable levy changes are wreaking havoc on long lead times and already thin margins. With U.S. cremations now topping 60% and projected to exceed two-thirds of all deaths by 2029—and Canada nearing 80%—memorial companies are scrambling to reinvent themselves through pet memorials, alternative markers, and wider service areas, all while questioning whether future generations will want physical memorials at all.

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