We’ve entered the final month of 2023, and fingers crossed stocks will have a great finish after a 8.9% jump in the S&P 500 in November. The market could get a lift from retail investors, the very folks who brought us meme stock mania more than two years ago. They were late to this rally and their initial hesitancy could fuel a continued buying spree, said Jason Goepfert, founder and senior analyst of Sundial Capital Research.

Decembers can be a mixed bag. Luckily, the benchmark index has risen almost 20% this year and it would take a massive decline for 2023 to not end in the black. “It’s a constant shifting back and forth between oversold and overbought conditions,” said Dan Suzuki, deputy chief investment officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. If you bet against the market last month, you have my sympathy. Short-sellers were hammered with mark-to-market losses of over $80 billion, according to data from S3 Partners LLC.