U.S. stocks ended higher in a truncated, post-holiday session on Friday that was complicated by an outage at an exchange operator as investors closed the book on a tumultuous month and kicked off the holiday shopping season.
The three major U.S. stock indexes made modest advances on the day, benchmark Treasury yields strengthened, and gold advanced.
"Today was your standard low volume upward bias around the holiday, but it wrapped up a very solid week for investors as optimism over the economy and potential cuts are back in the air," said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha.
All three indexes advanced during the holiday-shortened week, on growing optimism that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its December meeting.
For the month, the S&P 500 and the Dow posted marginal gains. The Nasdaq, however, posted a 1.5% decline in November, as risk appetite was soured by simmering worries over inflated tech stock valuations.
"It was a roller coaster of a month," Detrick added. "We went from hearing this was the worst November since the great financial crisis, to now the best Thanksgiving week for stocks since 2012."
"And now we still believe Santa will come to town with a potential end-of-year rally."
CME OUTAGE RESOLVED
An outage at CME Group, the world's largest exchange operator, caused mayhem in financial markets as trading was frozen on its currency platform and futures, affecting foreign exchange, commodities, Treasuries and stocks. The issue was resolved with less than an hour to go before the U.S. market opened.
U.S. equities trading ends at 1 p.m. ET (1800 GMT), while the bond market closes an hour later.
The crucial holiday shopping season is officially in full swing and appears to be off to a solid start. Overall online shopping on Thanksgiving rose 5.3%, according to Adobe Analytics, and while other early sales figures were promising, an air of caution was expressed by some shoppers who are mindful of overspending when inflation remains elevated and the labor market seems to be softening.
"The outlook for the consumer this holiday season is mixed," Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York said. "Fed futures indicate a 25-basis-point cut on the Fed funds rate, but that percentage will bounce around between now and the Fed meeting. There's certainly some concern about the consumer and the economy."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 289.30 points, or 0.61%, to 47,716.42, the S&P 500 rose 36.48 points, or 0.54%, to 6,849.09 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 151.00 points, or 0.65%, to 23,365.69.
European shares ended the session with modest gains for the day and month, notching their longest monthly winning streak since March 2024 as rising bets of a Fed rate cut and progress toward a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire buoyed sentiment.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe rose 4.29 points, or 0.43%, to 1,004.99.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.25%, while Europe's broad FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 5.64 points, or 0.25%.
The dollar headed for its worst weekly performance since late July on rising odds of further monetary easing from the Fed.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.07% to 99.46, with the euro up 0.04% at $1.16.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.1% to 156.15.
U.S. Treasury yields advanced on a low-volume day.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 1.7 basis points to 4.015%, from 3.998% late on Wednesday.
The 30-year bond yield rose 2.1 basis points to 4.6648% from 4.644% late on Wednesday.
The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, rose 1.4 basis points to 3.495%, from 3.481% late on Wednesday.
Front-month oil futures were mixed, with WTI posting a gain and Brent edging lower in the wake of the CME outage, while investors kept an eye on protracted peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and looked ahead to the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Sunday for clues regarding potential output changes.
U.S. crude rose 0.65% to $59.03 a barrel and Brent fell to $63.29 per barrel, down 0.08% on the day.
Gold prices were poised for monthly gains on Fed rate cut optimism. Spot gold rose 1.51% to $4,220.46 an ounce. U.S. gold futures rose 1.41% to $4,223.90 an ounce.
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