US stocks rose during a holiday-shortened trading day on Friday as a volatile month drew to a close and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) snapped a seven-month win streak.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) and blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the market higher on Black Friday, gaining around 0.6%. The generalist S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose by 0.5%, marking the fifth straight day of gains for the major indexes.
Stocks rebounded sharply this week as traders ramped up bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its meeting in December, less than two weeks away. Renewed faith in the AI trade provided a tailwind for tech names in the run-up to Thursday’s trading shutdown for the Thanksgiving holiday.
However, the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 ended a rocky month of trading with losses. A sharp cooldown in megacap tech names has led to a decline for November as investors reassessed how quickly AI-driven businesses can translate hype into sustainable profits.
The Nasdaq snapped a seven-month run of gains with monthly losses of nearly 2%. The S&P 500 fell 0.6% during the month, following a six-month winning streak. The Dow was roughly unchanged in November.
Earlier in the day, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange restored trading operations after a long outage disrupted live trading in futures and options across several markets worldwide, including US Treasurys and US crude oil. The disruption lasted until 8:30 a.m. ET, when CME said it resolved the outage.
As November wraps up, analysts are rolling out their stock-market predictions for the year ahead. Deutsche Bank has set a target for the S&P 500 of 8,000 by the end of 2026, at the highest end of forecasts. HSBC and JPMorgan expect the benchmark index to hover around the 7,500 mark.
Markets closed early on Friday, at 1 p.m. ET, with no major earnings or economic data releases on the docket.
