Wall Street's main indexes opened flat to slightly higher in Tuesday's shortened trading session, with U.S. stocks entering a historically strong period before rounding off their second consecutive year of gains.

The S&P 500 posted two new 52-week highs and one new low, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 26 new highs and 43 new lows.

Technology stocks led a broad rally on Wall Street during a holiday-shortened trading session the day before Christmas.

Wall Street's main indexes all closed higher on Tuesday, with gains in megacap and growth stocks bolstering benchmarks in a truncated Christmas Eve session. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite scored four straight sessions of gains,

Stocks shook off a choppy start to finish higher Monday, as Wall Street kicked off a holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 ended 0.7% higher after having been down 0.5% in the early going. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also recovered from an early slide to eke out a 0.2% gain. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 1%.

U.S. stock indexes edged higher in morning trading Tuesday, as gains for some Big Tech stocks made up for weakness elsewhere in the market. The S&P 500 rose 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 14 points,

Markets that began the year with investors expecting a global stock rally to fizzle, swift U.S. interest rate cuts to boost Treasuries and soften the dollar and emerging market currencies to strengthen have firmly defied that consensus.