Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS, because business can be slow, like waiting through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q business can do for you at AWS.com slash learn more.

Hey listeners, it's Saturday, December 7th.

I'm Francesca Fontana for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News and Markets,

our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them.

Let's get to it.

Welcome back and welcome to December.

So just to recap, the SMP 500 and the Dow both ended last week

at records and cap November as their best month of 2024. So how did the market start December?

Well, it seems like stocks really put their best foot forward in the first trading week of the month.

A big theme was the latest reads on the economy and what kind of interest rate decision

we can expect ahead of the Fed's policy meeting next week.

Friday's jobs report showed that the labor market is still in pretty good health, but not

good enough to forego a rate cut.

Rate cuts are generally good for stocks, so as you might expect, the indexes mostly moved higher on that.

Earlier in the week, we saw some big crypto moves.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump picked Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Atkins has questioned the SEC's crackdown on crypto firms, and he's expected to ease oversight on those companies. So after the

announcement, Bitcoin rallied and exceeded $100,000 for the first time. Wednesday also saw some

big gains in tech, led by salesports. But I'll come back to that in a bit. Now let's look at the

indexes, which all hit daily records throughout the week. The Dow had a weekly loss of less than 1%, while the NASDAQ gained about 3.3%, and the SMP rose 1%.

Let's zoom in on some discount retail stocks, Dollar Tree and Five Below.

The two made some noteworthy moves this week, reporting strong quarterly results and some executive shakeups.

...