U.S. stocks posted small gains on Friday after a holiday-shortened week and a volatile month.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the market higher on Black Friday, rising about 0.5% in mid-morning trade. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) and the generalist S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose about 4%.
Earlier in the day, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange restored trading operations after a prolonged outage disrupted live trading in futures and options in several markets around the world, including U.S. Treasuries and U.S. crude oil. The outage lasted until 8:30 a.m. ET, when CME said the outage had been resolved.
Stocks rose sharply this week after traders bet the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates less than two weeks from its December meeting. New confidence in AI trades provided a tailwind for tech names heading into Thursday’s close for the Thanksgiving holiday.
However, Wall Street indexes were looking down on the losing month. A sharp cooldown in megacap tech names led to a fall for November as investors reassessed how quickly AI-powered businesses can translate hype into sustainable profits.
As of midday trading Friday, the S&P 500 was little changed after a six-month winning streak for November. The Nasdaq was on track to snap a seven-month run of gains with losses of about 2%. The Dow was almost unchanged in November.
As November wraps up, analysts are rolling out their stock-market predictions for the coming year. Deutsche Bank is targeting an S&P 500 of 8,000 by the end of 2026, at the high end of the forecast. HSBC and JPMorgan expect the benchmark index to hover around the 7,500 mark.
Markets will close early on Friday, at 1 p.m. ET, with no major earnings or economic data releases on the docket.
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Stocks open with muted gains to close the holiday week
U.S. stocks opened with slight gains to close the holiday-short week and month of November.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) led stocks higher on Black Friday, rising about 0.4% in the first minute of trading. The broader S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) both rose 0.2%.
Stocks rebounded strongly this week after traders bet the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates at its meeting in less than two weeks in December and renew their faith in AI trading.
Markets opened shortly after the CME Group resumed operations after disrupting live trading in futures and options in several markets around the world, including US Treasuries and US crude oil.
The stock market will close at 1 PM ET
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