US stocks ended November on a firm note with the final trading session seeing modest gains as the S&P 500 rose 0.5%, the Nasdaq gained 0.8% and the Dow added 0.6% in a post-Thanksgiving shortened session on Friday. Risk appetite has returned with investors assigning roughly an 80% to 85% probability that the Fed delivers a rate cut within the next few weeks. Communication services led the advance while healthcare lagged. Large-cap tech was mixed with Microsoft up 1.3%, Amazon 1.8%, Meta 2.3%, Broadcom 1.4% and Tesla 0.8% while Nvidia slipped 1.8% and Alphabet was roughly flat. Earlier a technical outage at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange briefly disrupted US futures after cooling systems failed at a Chicago area data center, adding to intraday volatility. For the month the S&P 500 was mostly flat, the Dow added 0.3% and the Nasdaq has lost 1.6%, ending a seven-month winning streak as investors reassess stretched AI valuations.
The euro edged slightly below $1.16 in the final session of the month as investors absorbed a wave of economic data and weighed its implications for the European Central Bank’s policy path. In Germany, retail sales fell 0.3% in October, missing expectations for a 0.2% rise and underscoring ongoing weakness in domestic demand amid elevated uncertainty. Inflation was unchanged at 2.3% in November, while the EU-harmonized rate accelerated to 2.6%, its highest since February. Elsewhere in the euro area, inflation in France and Italy remained steady and below forecasts, while Spain’s rate eased less than anticipated. The data, combined with ECB meeting minutes indicating policymakers see little urgency to cut rates, left market expectations largely unchanged, with investors still projecting no rate adjustments through 2026. Across the Atlantic, softer US economic indicators and dovish comments from several Fed officials bolstered expectations of a third Fed rate cut in December.
