Wall Street edges higher in thin post-holiday trade
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Traders working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in New York City.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
- US stocks rose on Nov 28, driven by retail and tech gains amidst thin post-Thanksgiving trading; Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all increased.
- Intel surged 10.2% following news it may supply Apple processors by 2027, but Nasdaq closed down 1.51% for the month.
- A CME Group outage briefly disrupted futures trading, highlighting risks in market connectivity during a crucial holiday shopping week.
AI generated
NEW YORK - US stocks climbed on Nov 28 in thin trading volume during a shortened session after Thanksgiving, driven by gains in retail and a recovery in tech stocks.
Expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut in December strengthened throughout the week, helping underpin sentiment across equity markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.61 per cent, to 47,716.42 points, the S&P 500 gained 0.54 per cent, to 6,849.09 points and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.65 per cent, to 23,365.69.
All of the major S&P 500 sectors were up except healthcare, with pharmaceutical Eli Lilly down 2.6 per cent.
Intel helped lead the S&P 500 with a 10.2 per cent gain after a TF International Securities analyst said the company would begin shipping Apple’s lowest-end M processor as early as 2027.
Index notches weekly gains, mixed for month
The three main indexes posted weekly gains. The S&P 500 rose 3.73 per cent, the Nasdaq gained 4.91 per cent, and the Dow climbed 3.18 per cent. The S&P and the Dow swung to marginally positive for the month after the Nov 28 prices settled.
But the Nasdaq closed down 1.51 per cent this month, reflecting growing concerns about stretched AI and tech valuations, with investors taking profits and reducing exposure.
“This is a light volume post-holiday session, as those tend to be, with not much activity,” said Mr Cole Smead, chief executive at Smead Capital Management. “But I think everyone woke up over the past weeks to the fact that the outcome of AI is still very unknown.”
Futures trading was temporarily disrupted in the morning following a CME Group outage that had temporarily frozen currencies, commodities and equity contracts around the globe.
CME’s stock futures offerings linked to US stocks are typically heavily traded before US markets open, with investors relying on them to gauge trends and directions.
CME said it was due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centres.
Shares of CME Group were marginally higher.
“We’re kind of lucky today. It was such a low-volume day, but it could have had a much bigger effect,” said Mr Joe Saluzzi, partner, co-founder and head of equity market structure research and co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.
“It does point to the risk of these failures and the connectedness to the markets that could cause bigger problems.”
This week also kicked off the holiday shopping season, starting with Thanksgiving on Nov 27, Black Friday and Cyber Monday - crucial days of sales for big-box retailers. REUTERS
