U.S. stocks opened higher on Friday as a holiday-shortened week and an underwhelming month drew to a close and as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange resumed trading following a data center glitch.
The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led shares slightly higher on Black Friday, gaining about 0.4% in the first few minutes of trading. The broad S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) both rose a little more than 0.2%.
CME Group has resumed operations after a lengthy outage disrupted real-time trading of futures and options contracts in several markets around the world, including US Treasurys and US crude oil. Individual stocks appeared to be trading flat. The outage lasted until 8:30 a.m. ET, when CME said it had resolved the outage.
Stocks rebounded sharply this week as traders increased bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its December meeting, less than two weeks away. Renewed confidence in artificial intelligence trading provided a tailwind for tech names ahead of Thursday’s close of business for the Thanksgiving holiday.
But when trading resumes on Friday, Wall Street indexes will be looking at a month of losses. A sharp decline in megacap tech names led to a decline for November as investors reassessed how quickly AI-powered businesses can translate hype into sustainable profits.
By Wednesday’s close, both the Dow and S&P 500 were slightly lower for the month, about to end a six-month winning streak. The Nasdaq, down 2% year to date, is on pace to snap a seven-month winning streak.
As November draws to a close, analysts release their stock market forecasts for the coming year. Deutsche Bank has set a target for the S&P 500 of 8,000 by the end of 2026, at the high end of its forecast. HSBC and JPMorgan expect the benchmark to hover around 7,500.
Markets will close early Friday at 1:00 PM ET with no major earnings or economic data released.
LIVE 8 updates
-
CME Group resumes trading after an outage caused markets to go dark
CME Group said all its markets were back and trading after a data center cooling problem led to a widespread outage that lasted several hours.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F), S&P 500 (ES=F) and Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) were flat when trading resumed. Dow and S&P 500 futures rose 0.1 percent, while Nasdaq futures rose 0.3 percent.
WTI crude futures (CL=F) gained 0.3%; Brent futures (BZ=F) rose 0.1%.
CME reopened its EBS foreign exchange platform around 7:00 a.m. ET, but trading for the rest of its markets, including U.S. Treasuries and crude oil futures, was affected until around 8:30 a.m. ET. CME attributed the outage to a problem in the cooling system at a data center near Chicago.
-
Wall Street’s 2026 predictions are coming — and some see the S&P 500 hitting 8,000
Allie Canal of Yahoo Finance writes:
Read more here.
-
Good morning. Here’s what’s happening today.
-
CME is partially restoring operations with the restart of the FX platform
CME ( CME ) began gradually restoring operations early Friday after halting futures and options trading for several hours due to a technical glitch.
The EBS exchange opened for trading around 7 a.m. ET, according to a notice on CME’s website. There was no indication of when other markets stalled by the outage might expect a restart.
“BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU are now open. Due to a cooling issue at the CyrusOne data centers, our other markets are currently down,” the announcement said.
US and global markets were hit by the close of CME futures, US Treasuries and WTI crude futures among those affected as bond and commodity platforms went dark.
A cooling problem at CyrusOne’s data centers was at the root of the shutdown, according to CME.
-
Pre-Trade Trend Tickers: Oracle, Alphabet and Strategy
oracle (ORCL) stocks were down more than 1 percent before the bell on Friday. Morgan Stanley on Thursday signaled credit market concerns for tech stocks, and things will only get worse in 2026 unless Oracle can reassure investors about its AI spending.
the alphabet (Google) Shares rose 1 percent in premarket trading Friday. Attention has turned to the tech giant in recent days for its AI efforts and challenging lead Nvidia ( NVDA ) with its new AI chips and Gemini 3 chatbot.
strategy (MSTR) the stock rose 2% before the bell. Strategy, which is the largest corporation holding bitcoin, has seen its shares fall 5% over the past five days due to bitcoin’s decline. Bitcoin moved above $90,000 again.
-
Gold is closing in on a fourth consecutive monthly win as hopes of a rate cut blossom
Bloomberg reports:
Gold (GC=F) rose, on track for a fourth monthly gain, on heightened expectations for a further US interest rate cut.
Futures and options trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was halted for several hours due to a data center outage, affecting liquidity in precious metals markets and leading to choppy sessions with wider-than-usual bid-ask spreads.
Bullion was near $4,160 an ounce on Friday, up more than 2 percent for the week. A series of comments by Federal Reserve officials and the release of delayed economic data bolstered the case for lower borrowing costs, which typically benefit gold because it pays no interest. Swap traders are pricing in a more than 80% chance of a quarter-point cut in December.
Read more here.
-
Commodity trading has been halted as the data center issue puts a pause on CME futures
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
-
Oil posts biggest one-month drop in two years
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
