A late November rally propelled stocks near record highs, with investor optimism over a potential Federal Reserve interest-rate cut in December helping reverse the effects of an earlier midmonth market slump.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5% on Friday, pushing it near a record set in late October and helping the index eke out a 0.1% monthly gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.6% on the day, finishing the month with a 0.3% gain.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq, however, registered its first monthly loss since March, falling 1.5% after a choppy period spurred by fears of an artificial-intelligence bubble. The index added about 0.7% Friday.
Stocks across the board gained in Friday’s shortened session despite a CME Group outage that disrupted futures trading overnight.
The Nasdaq-led gains were bolstered by chip stocks including Intel, Analog Devices and Micron Technology, and Magnificent Seven names like Amazon and Meta Platforms. Nvidia defied the trend, dropping 1.8% and capping a rocky month for the stock.
This week’s upturn, which pushed the S&P 500 and Dow into the black for November, helped notch a seventh consecutive month of gains. That marks the blue-chip index’s longest winning streak since the start of 2018.
CME said its derivatives markets reopened at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday. Before then, traders hadn’t been able to buy or sell CME futures and options, including for U.S. indexes, Treasurys, gold and oil, due to cooling problems at a key data center. Analysts said the CME outage lowered trading volumes on what was already expected to be one of the year’s quietest trading days.
Some investors are cautiously optimistic about the market’s next move, viewing the recent tech-driven decline as a welcome correction that has brought down the valuations of the more speculative market areas.
“That was a healthy correction that burst a bubble and taught some investors that earnings, cash flow and valuation actually do matter,” said Jay Hatfield, chief executive at Infrastructure Capital Advisors.
Global markets were little changed, with the Stoxx Europe 600 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rising less than 0.3%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell by a similar percentage. The European benchmark notched a fifth consecutive monthly gain, while the two Asian gauges ended November in the red.