Friday brought a bit of market lethargy following the Christmas break, with stocks drifting slightly lower in what traders call thin liquidity conditions. Translation: not many people were trading, so don't read too much into the daily moves.

The S&P 500 slipped a barely-there 0.03% to close at 6,929.94, while the Nasdaq Composite edged down 0.09% to 23,593.10. The Dow Jones gave up about 20 points to finish at 48,710.97. Nothing dramatic, just the market catching its breath.

But zoom out to the weekly view, and things look considerably brighter. The S&P 500 jumped 1.4% for the week, marking its fourth weekly surge in the past five weeks. Both the Dow and Nasdaq also added more than 1% over the week, continuing what's been a pretty solid run heading into year-end.

Market sentiment, as measured by CNN's Fear and Greed Index, pulled back from 57.7 to 55.5 on Friday but remained comfortably in "Greed" territory. For context, this index tracks seven equally weighted indicators on a scale from 0 to 100, where higher numbers signal greed (investors feeling confident, maybe too confident) and lower numbers indicate fear. The premise is simple: fear tends to push stock prices down, while greed lifts them up.

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) bucked Friday's sluggish trend, climbing more than 1% after analysts cheered news of a reported $20 billion strategic deal with AI startup Groq. Wall Street sees the move as another way for Nvidia to strengthen its already formidable competitive position in artificial intelligence.

Most sectors on the S&P 500 closed in the red, with consumer discretionary, energy, and financial stocks taking the biggest hits. Materials and information technology were the exceptions, managing to finish higher.

In energy markets, WTI crude prices fell on signs of potential progress in Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Sunday, which traders seem to view as a constructive development.

On the earnings front, investors are waiting for results from Obook Holdings Inc. (OWLS) today.

Understanding the Fear and Greed Index

The Fear and Greed Index essentially takes the market's temperature by looking at seven different sentiment indicators. When everyone's nervous, stocks typically get hammered. When everyone's feeling confident and greedy, prices tend to climb. At 55.5, we're in greed mode but not at extreme levels—there's still room to run, or room to pull back, depending on how the data shakes out.