OUR APPROACH
OUR APPROACH
Insights
Market Highlights
The market extended its rally this past month; the S&P 500 posted its sixth straight monthly gain, rising 2.3%. The Nasdaq rose for a seventh consecutive month, marking its longest monthly winning streak since 2018. While the market endured multiple pullbacks, the rallies, fueled by optimism surrounding AI, falling treasury rates and continued expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts led to record highs.
November 7, 2025
S&P groups similar companies into 11 sectors; when we look into the S&P 500's performance in October, we find that 6 of the sectors were up, 1 of them was up by more than 5%. 5 sectors were down, 1 was down by more than 5%.
The best performing sector was Information Technology with a 6.2% return. October was marked by enthusiasm for AI and AI related companies. NVIDIA reached a historic milestone, becoming the first company to surpass the $5 trillion market valuation mark. NVIDIA, the largest stock in the sector, was the biggest contributor to the sector’s outperformance with a return of 8.5%.
Meanwhile Materials posted the worst return at -5.1%. The biggest contributor to this underperformance was Linde Plc, which is the largest stock in the sector and had a return of -11.9%
Reminders
With the end of the year quickly approaching, we’d like to take this opportunity to ask that you please start to consider any year-end gifting intentions. Fidelity asks that these requests be made with as much advance notice as possible to best ensure they are processed by the year-end deadline. If you plan to make any gifts from your accounts, including gifts of appreciated stock from taxable accounts, Qualified Charitable Distributions from retirement accounts or cash transfers, please try to let us know by the end of November.
Additionally, we do our best to be sure that anyone subject to a required minimum distribution from their retirement account takes theirs prior to year-end, but if you have not taken yours for 2025 and do not have it set up to go out systematically before year-end, please reach out to us as soon as possible so we can ensure your distribution is processed in time.
Thoughts from The Team
The holidays, while marked by joy and festivities, are also a time ripe with bad actors attempting to take advantage of your generosity, shopping habits and rushed schedules. Please stay alert in the coming months and be on the lookout for any suspicious looking emails and/or texts. We remind you to be especially wary of clicking on any links and acting on any requests that emphasize time sensitivity or urgency. This month we wanted to share pictures of real-life text scams that have been been sent to us at Cornell Pochily so that you can become more aware of scams circulating this season.
This text is a scammer pretending to be USPS. With many of us doing holiday shopping online, please know that USPS will only ever text you if you have proactively signed up for their official “Text Tracking” services and that they will never send you a clickable link.
Another common scam is a text like the one below, received by one of our advisors, attempting to make the recipient believe their credit card has been fraudulently used. If you think you are a victim of credit card fraud, always call the number on the back of your card rather than interact with the text.
Similar to the text above, the following text is trying to convince the recipient that their bank account has been hacked. Please be especially skeptical any time a text is asking you to take urgent or immediate action; this is the scammer attempting to make you react quickly before you have time to properly consider its veracity.
When in doubt, always call the institution or service provider directly to confirm information received via text and never clink on links that are sent unprompted.
We hope you have a lovely start to the holiday season and a very happy Thanksgiving!
Be Well,
Disclaimers
The information contained herein, including summary/prices/quotes/statistics have been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Any comparison to a benchmark is for comparative purposes only and actual account composition may differ. Investments cannot be made directly into an index. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Past results are not indicative of future returns. This material is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice, a recommendation, or as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to purchase or a recommendation of any interest in any fund or security. This material does not intend to address the financial objectives, situation or specific needs of any individual investor.
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