U.S. stock indexes are falling Thursday to start 2025. The S&P 500 was down 0.7% in afternoon trading after rising as much as 0.9% earlier. It's coming off a four-day losing streak, its longest since early September,

A soft finish to 2024 still left stocks with a second straight stellar year. The S&P 500 logged a 23.3% gain, which follows a 24% rise in 2023. The combined gains of more than 53% was the largest two-year percentage jump for the index since year-end 1998,

Investors head into the new year believing the economy on a firm footing. That wasn’t the case at the start of 2024, when even the most bullish analysts underestimated the strength of the market.