Stocks rise in thin Thanksgiving trading ~ EconomyLens.com

London (AFP) – Wall Street and key European equity markets rose on Friday in thin US holiday weekend trading, with a key US exchange suffering an outage. Trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the world’s major operators, was halted by a technical outage first reported at 0240 GMT Friday.

“Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted,” the CME said in a statement. “All CME Group markets are open and trading,” it said in a later statement. Market participants rely heavily on CME platforms to manage risk through futures contracts tied, for example, to stock indices, interest rates, and currencies. The outage also froze pricing on the US benchmark crude contract, WTI, for several hours.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had such a long outage,” said Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Markets. “Good news was it happened during the US holiday so there was not a lot of action and orders,” he said. Wall Street’s main indices pushed higher during a half-day trading session, having been closed Thursday for Thanksgiving.

– Interest rate focus –

If the positive start follows through, “this may prove to be the best week for US stock indices since late June,” said Trade Nation analyst David Morrison. The Dow and S&P were up more than four percent and the Nasdaq more than five percent. Europe’s main indices ended the day higher. Without direction overnight from New York, Asian markets moved with little conviction. Concerns about the high valuations of AI stocks have tempered investor enthusiasm this month. The Dow and S&P 500 were both marginally higher for November, while the Nasdaq Composite was more than one percent lower.

But focus this week has been firmly on growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again next month. Top Fed officials have backed a third straight reduction, mostly citing a weakening labor market despite elevated inflation. Attention now turns to data releases over the next week or so that could play a role in the bank’s final decision, with private hiring, services activity, and personal consumption expenditure — the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation.

With the recent government shutdown postponing or cancelling the release of some key data, closely watched non-farm payrolls figures are now due in mid-December, after the Fed’s policy decision. Markets see around an 87-percent chance of a cut next month and three more in 2026. Meanwhile, the yen was erratic against the dollar after data showed inflation in Tokyo, seen as a bellwether for Japan, came in a little higher than expected, reigniting talk on whether the central bank will hike interest rates in coming months. The Japanese unit remains under pressure against the greenback amid concerns about Japan’s fiscal outlook and pledges for more borrowing.

Oil prices were higher ahead of a meeting of OPEC+ oil exporting nations. “Markets are expecting the group to hold production levels unchanged from January owing to concerns about excessive supply and weak demand, and, obviously, weaker oil prices,” said Forex.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada.