Friday, U.S. stocks extended a Thanksgiving week rally, with the S&P 500 up 0.54%, the Dow up 0.61%, and the Nasdaq gaining 0.65%, even as the tech-heavy index locked in its first monthly loss since March. A rotation out of the most expensive AI names earlier in November left the Nasdaq down about 2% for the month, while the S&P 500 and Dow eked out small gains, each logging a seventh straight winning month.
Traders are leaning into a soft-landing narrative and pricing a high probability that the Federal Reserve will deliver a third consecutive quarter-point rate cut in December, after officials such as New York Fed President John Williams signaled room for a "further adjustment" lower in rates. That backdrop helped small caps in the Russell 2000 outperform in November and pushed a dozen S&P 500 components, from Walmart to Broadcom, to fresh all-time highs as investors broadened beyond the mega-cap AI trade.
Market functioning briefly came into focus when a cooling failure at a CME Group data center froze futures in equities, Treasurys, FX, and commodities overnight. The outage left investors watching ETFs like SPY and QQQ as real-time proxies until futures trading resumed. Strategists expect only short-lived volatility from the incident but highlight it as a reminder that physical infrastructure risks can abruptly disrupt global price discovery.
In commodities, spot silver surged 90% year to date and hit a record high, far outpacing an already-strong move in gold as some investors sought hard-asset hedges amid shifting monetary policy expectations. Airline stocks also outperformed into the holiday, helped by the Federal Aviation Administration’s projection of the busiest Thanksgiving travel in 15 years and a double-digit slide in jet fuel prices over the past week.
