CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks End Lower, Fed Releases December Minutes, AI Trade Under Pressure

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored and reported by CNBC's Jill Schneider. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Joel Schneider, CNBC. Wall Street has one more chance to add to its gains for the year. Stocks finished the day in the red, but all the major indexes are still on track to post double-digit gains for 2025. The Dow dropped almost 95 points, about two-tenths of a percent. The S&P 500 dropped nine and a half points, and the NASDAQ was lower by 55 points, about a quarter of a percent. The Federal Reserve has released minutes from its highly divisive meeting earlier this month, which concluded with a vote to lower interest rates again. It appeared to be an even closer call than the final vote indicated.

Officials expressed a variety of opinions during the December 9th, 10th meeting. That, according to the summary, provided a day ahead of its customary release due to the New Year's holiday. Ultimately, the FOMC approved a quarter percentage point cut by a vote of 9 to 3. That's the most dissents since 2019, as officials debated over the need to support the labor market against concerns over inflation. Meta closing 2025 with an 11th hour acquisition, announcing it is buying Manis, a startup founded in China. It specializes in developing general purpose AI agents. This has been pretty part of the course for Zuckerberg. He's highlighted AI.

He's deployed AI aggressively. He's already used it of the last two to three years to materially improve his ad platform and his user platform. And it showed up in the metrics and more importantly in the financials. But he's leaning into it even more aggressively now. and we're all chasing, or their meta is chasing a super intelligence product cycle. Mark Mahaney is head of internet research at Evercore ISI. Jill Schneider, CNBC. Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro, 24-7 access to market-moving news and interviews

with three global live streams, subscriber-only content, plus exclusive live events. This is my first time at the Stock Exchange, and it's been awesome. To be on the floor, I just can't believe I'm here. Become a CNBC Pro. Go to cnbc.com slash get pro now.