Stocks Climb as Traders Close Out Unsettled Month

Wall Street rose for a fifth straight day in abbreviated trading Friday to put the wraps on a volatile month. Retail stocks were mixed on the big Black Friday sales event.

• The Dow climbed 289.30 points, or 0.6%, to 47,716.42, ending the week up 3.2%.
• The S&P 500 rose 36.48 points, or 0.5%, to 6,849.09, closing up 3.7% for the week.
• The Nasdaq rose 151 points, or 0.7%, to 23,365.69, for a gain for the week of 4.9%.

Stocks swooned in mid-month as investors worried that stocks boosted by the frenzy around artificial intelligence such as Nvidia's had gotten too expensive, the AP reports. Nvidia lost 1.8% Friday and closed the month with a double-digit loss. Oracle fell 23% in November, while Palantir Technologies sank 16%. Some tech stocks did notch monthly gains, most notably Alphabet, which rose nearly 14% due to excitement about its recently released Gemini AI model. The market turned around on hopes the Federal Reserve will again cut interest rates at its meeting next month. Recent comments from Fed officials have given traders more confidence the central bank will again cut interest rates at its meeting that ends Dec. 10. Traders are betting on a nearly 87% probability that the Fed will cut next month, according to data from CME Group.

Investors also had their eye on retail stocks as they wait to see if shoppers rushed to take advantage of the Black Friday sales event. Macy's fell 0.3% while Kohl's gained 1.4%. Dick's Sporting Goods dropped 0.5%. Among specialty retailers, Abercrombie & Fitch rose 2.9%, and American Eagle Outfitters gained 0.7%. Amid the volatility in tech stocks, traders moved money into other parts of the market. Pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Merck each rose more than 20% for the month. Travel-related companies such as Marriott and Expedia also posted strong monthly gains. Earlier, futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq were halted for hours due to a technical issue at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The exchange said the problem was tied to an outage at a CyrusOne data center.