Boosted by technology stocks and housing, major U.S. Stock indexes closed higher despite slow post-holiday trading.

The Nasdaq ended the day breaking a record. By the market’s close, it had reached 5,487 points, a gain of 0.45 percent.

The Dow moved closer to a record 20,000 high reaching 19,945 by the time of the bell.

The Associated Press notes that despite these gains, it was an otherwise slow day for the markets. In fact, the news service says it was the lightest trading day since October 2015. At the same time, signs point to an altogether healthy year for U.S. markets.

“Markets are moving toward 20,000 and bond yields are up; there’s a little bit of buoyancy in oil prices,” chief investment officer at Wells Fargo Private Bank, Erik Davidson, told the news service.

Reuters adds that consumer and housing data, along with technology gains, pushed markets higher:

“Tuesday data showed American consumers’ confidence shot to its highest in more than 15 years in December as they saw more strength ahead in business conditions, stock prices and the job market, while house prices continued their steady recovery in October.

“U.S. equities have been riding a post-presidential election rally, feeding on optimism that Donald Trump’s plans for deregulation and infrastructure spending could bolster the economy. With the market priced for positive outcomes in various scenarios, some see the end-year rally as an opportunity to cash-in gains. …

“About 4.13 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 7.27 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions. Volume this week last year averaged 5 billion stocks daily.

“The largest percentage gainer on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 was Nvidia Corp, which rose 6.9 percent and boosted the chipmakers.

“Amazon rose 1.4 percent to $771.40. The online retailer said it shipped over 1 billion items to Prime members during the holiday season.”

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It can take decades for a country build up a name as a good place to do business, and the U.S. consistently ranks among the best. But some economists say its reputation for trustworthiness could be challenged if President-elect Trump makes good on threats to rip up international agreements.

“The U.S. is consistently among the top five, the top 10 countries in the world in terms of the environment for doing business. And this is mostly because of the rule of law and the transparency of government,” says Simeon Djankov, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the World Bank.

He warns that America’s solid reputation could quickly disappear if President-elect Trump carries through with some of his campaign promises. He points to the Paris climate accord, signed by world leaders a year ago. Djankov says there was an underlying expectation in the global business community that an international contract would be honored when the next U.S. president took office.

“Suddenly the president-elect says, ‘Well, I don’t like this agreement, I may not abide by it,’ ” he says. “This business is thrown into panic, already they have spent maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars abiding by this new regulation, now it’s for nothing, so to speak.”

Scuppering such agreements can erode trust with international investors, says Ray Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University.

“If there’s one thing that deters investment, it is uncertainty,” he says. “And we’re seeing uncertainty. You don’t quite know what you’re in for if you consider doing business in the U.S.”

It’s still unclear whether there will be a bright line between Trump’s business dealings and the White House. His children have sat in on meetings with world leaders and advisers. Trump has said his sons would run his companies while he’s president — but he could still make money off his name used on properties across the world.

“We should not forget that perceptions are important,” says Alejandro Salas, a director at Transparency International, which produces an index every year looking at the impact of perceived corruption on international investment in more than 160 countries.

Salas says the higher level of corruption, the less attractive a country is to investors, and vice versa. The U.S. ranked 16th last year, tied with Austria. Salas says that may change because Trump appears to disregard many rules and regulations.

“The fact that there could be so much conflict of interest, the fact that he says as far as the conflict of interest laws don’t apply to the president, that’s very dangerous,” Salas says.

The American system of checks and balances will help hold the government accountable, Salas says. For now, investors will give the new president time and latitude to settle into the job. Meanwhile, the stock market is going gangbusters.

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It’s a continuing paradox of the meat industry. Every year, more restaurants and food companies announce that they will sell only meat produced with minimal or no use of antibiotics. And every year, despite those pledges, more antibiotics are administered to the nation’s swine, cattle and poultry.

According to the latest figures, released this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, antibiotic sales for use on farm animals increased by 1 percent in 2015, compared to the previous year. The increase was slightly greater – 2 percent — for antibiotics used as human medicine.

The FDA and other public health agencies have been pushing farmers to rely less on these drugs. Heavy use of antibiotics both in human medicine and in agriculture has led to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, complicating the task of treating many infections.

But the FDA finds a glimmer of good news in the latest figures, pointing out that the rate of increase has slowed. In the previous year, antibiotic use had increased by 4 percent, and a total of 22 percent from 2009 to 2014.

The poultry industry has made the most ambitious promises to reduce antibiotic use. Perdue Farms says that 95 percent of its chickens already are raised with no antibiotics at all. Tyson Foods, the largest producer, has announced that it is “striving” to end the use of antibiotics that also are used in human medicine. Tyson will continue to deploy a class of antibiotics called ionophores, which can’t be used on humans. The new report, however, doesn’t shed any light on the impact of these moves, because it doesn’t show how much of each drug is used on cattle, swine or poultry.

In a statement, David Wallinga, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that “this report further underscores how urgently we need more and stronger government action” to reduce antibiotic use.

Ron Phillips, from the Animal Health Institute, which represents veterinary drug manufacturers, says that the FDA’s data on drug sales tell us little about what’s most important — whether the use of those drugs is leading to more drug-resistant bacteria. He says that another recent government report, from the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, shows “very encouraging trends.” According to that report, bacteria found on meat at slaughter have not shown increasing resistance to most antibiotics in recent years.

There are some concerning trends, however. Some species of bacteria found on cattle have shown increasing levels of resistance to ciproflaxin, and turkey samples showed a big increase in Salmonella that’s resistant to several different drugs.

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President Obama has indefinitely blocked offshore drilling in areas of the Atlantic Ocean and in Arctic waters, a move aimed at advancing environmental protection during his final days in office.

The Arctic protections are a joint partnership with Canada. “These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement.

“They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited,” the White House added. “By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region — at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels.”

Obama’s action designates 31 Atlantic canyons “off limits to oil and gas exploration and development activity,” totaling 3.8 million acres, according to the administration. It provides the same protections to much of the Arctic’s waters, covering the “vast majority of U.S. waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas,” totaling 115 million acres. Canada is doing the same to “all Arctic Canadian waters,” the joint statement adds.

Obama took these actions by invoking a law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president the authority to withdraw lands from oil and gas leases. But as NPR’s Jeff Brady and Jennifer Ludden report, major questions remain about what will happen if the incoming Trump administration attempts to reverse this action.

“The White House says the president is acting within his authority, that Presidents of both parties have done this in the past, and trying to reverse such an order would be unprecedented if Trump tried to do this,” Jeff said on All Things Considered.

There is no legal precedent for reversal, Jeff reports. “So if there’s a legal challenge, and I’m not going to be surprised if there is one, it’s really not clear what a court would decide.”

As Bloomberg reports, the “statute doesn’t include a provision for reversal and that action may take years to work its way through court.”

Environmental groups such as Oceana are celebrating the designation. “President Obama has taken a key step in protecting important areas of the Atlantic Ocean from offshore drilling,” as Jacqueline Savitz, the group’s senior vice president for the United States, said in a statement. “The people of the Atlantic coast refused to allow their way of life to be compromised and we commend their hard work making their voices heard in Washington.”

Representatives of the oil and gas industry are unhappy about the news. “We think it’s a very shortsighted decision to take these areas off-limits,” Andy Radford, senior policy adviser for offshore issues at the American Petroleum Institute, told Jeff. The action poses “great risk to our energy security going forward and eliminates the opportunity to create jobs and help small businesses throughout the country. “

Earlier this year, the Obama administration reversed course on a plan that would have allowed Atlantic offshore drilling after uproar from local communities and environmentalists.

Then, the administration designated the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that it has protected an Atlantic area about the size of New Jersey from deep-sea commercial fishing.

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The International Monetary Fund’s executive board expressed its “full confidence” in IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Monday, hours after she was found guilty of negligence for improperly overseeing a 2008 case when she was France’s finance minister.

Lagarde has led the IMF since 2011.

“The Executive Board took all relevant factors into account in its discussions, including the Managing Director’s outstanding leadership of the Fund and the wide respect and trust for her leadership globally,” the board said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said, “We have every confidence in her ability to guide the Fund at a critical time for the global economy.”

The case stemmed from Lagarde’s role in “settling a legal battle between the French state and business tycoon Bernard Tapie,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Lagarde, who was part of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy’s administration at the time, was accused of succumbing to political pressure in her handling of the case.

She maintained her innocence, saying she might have been unknowingly negligent but that she did her job as well as she could at the time.

Lagarde thanked the IMF board for the vote of confidence “in my ability to do my job,” The Associated Press reported. She said she would not appeal the court’s ruling.

The conviction could bolster critics of the IMF, “who could complain about her continued role at the fund,” the Journal said.

“She will be a little — slightly — less credible talking about corruption, but the fund can talk about corruption without her,” Ted Truman, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, told the Journal.

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The story of a new law starts with some online Christmas shopping gone wrong.

In the winter of 2008, John Palmer of Layton, Utah decided to buy his wife Jen a couple of holiday tchotchkes. Things like desk toys and keychains.

The order, from the online retailer KlearGear, never arrived.

After a testy back and forth with the company’s customer service, Jen Palmer did what many thousands of consumers do every month: She posted about her negative experience on an online business review site.

“I posted the review and then we forgot about it,” she says.

But four years later, they received an email from the company demanding they take the review down. The company said they had violated a “non-disparagement” clause in the terms of service — a caveat in the fine print that restricts customers from publicly reviewing their experience with the company.

The company said the Palmers would be subject to a $3,500 fine if they didn’t comply.

The Palmers refused to take down the review or pay the fine. A few months later the couple found their credit had taken a major hit — KlearGear had passed the fine on to a collection agency and reported it to several credit bureaus as an unpaid bill.

They went to the press and found legal representation from Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group.

“The purpose of a non-disparagement clause is to have a hammer with which to hit consumers who haven’t said anything false,” says Paul Levy, a lawyer with Public Citizen. “But you can make them take it down, and you can seek damages, you can seek attorney’s fees, what might you.”

Levy says gag clauses like these can limit truthful speech and deprive consumers of valuable information when choosing where to spend their money.

After a lengthy legal back and forth, the Palmers won a default judgment in federal court and their credit was restored.

But their case was an extreme example.

“Surely 95 percent of the time consumers simply remove the review, rather than stand behind their words, in order to avoid any potential legal action,” says Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

He says it’s likely that the use of these gag clauses is much more widespread than it appears.

“So the number of lawsuits are fairly rare because there’s a much larger group of reviews that have been removed under the threat of lawsuits,” Goldman says.

The KlearGear case attracted media coverage around the country and helped gain the attention of legislators. California passed a law outlawing the use of non-disparagement clauses to limit customer reviews in 2014. Online review platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor joined the effort to pass federal legislation.

It culminated last week, when President Obama signed the Consumer Review Fairness Act into law after it passed unanimously in the Senate last month. It prohibits businesses from putting non-disparagement clauses into terms of service.

Those clauses “will not work in court. And they will expose the business that tries to use those techniques to potential liability,” Goldman explains. He points out that under the law, businesses will still have the ability to combat false reviews through defamation law.

Not everyone is happy about the new law, however. Joe Sullivan, an Atlanta business attorney who regularly advises businesses on how to deal with negative online reviews, says he’s heard some pushback from businesses, none of whom wanted to speak on the record.

“It wasn’t necessarily a solution in search of a problem,” he says, “but it was something where it wasn’t a widespread practice.” Sullivan says there wasn’t much incentive for companies to use this kind of fine print to sue customers.

He says some businesses view the law as an effort by consumer review sites to grow their customer base.

Despite the concerns of some businesses, Jen Palmer is happy that the new law means customers like her will not face legal retaliation in the future.

“I’m very glad to hear that this seems to be the one thing that Congress can agree on,” she says. “I’d definitely call it the best Christmas present of all, to make sure that nobody else has to go through this.”

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