Stock futures pointed slightly higher before a tech outage halted trading on Black Friday, with major indexes poised to record their best week since June.
Futures associated with the tech-heavy Nasdaq, benchmark S&P 500, and blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.2%, 0.1%, and 0.1%, respectively, before the trading stoppage on CME Group (CME) stocks, bonds, and commodities exchanges.
CME Group, whose shares were down roughly 1% before the bell, recently posted an alert at the top of its website saying “BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU are now open. Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our other markets are currently halted.”
Before the halt, WTI crude futures, the U.S. oil benchmark, were 0.7% higher at $59.10 per barrel and gold futures were up 0.5% to $4,220 per ounce.
Bonds trading resumed, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note ticked lower from Wednesday’s close to 3.99%.
Unaffected was Bitcoin, which was trading in a tight range at around $91,500, while the U.S. dollar index, which tracks the performance of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, was 0.1% higher at 99.74.
On Wednesday, the three major stock indexes closed higher for a fourth straight session. Markets were closed yesterday for Thanksgiving, and stocks and bonds markets will close early today, at 1 p.m. ET and 2 p.m. ET, respectively.
The indexes are on pace for their biggest weekly gain since June. The Nasdaq is up 4.2% through the first three sessions of the holiday-shortened week, while the S&P 500 and Dow are up about 3.2% and 2.6%, respectively. However, today is the last trading day in November, and all three enter Friday down for the month, with the Nasdaq having fallen 2.2%, the S&P 500 0.4%, and the Dow 0.3%.
In corporate news, shares of Robinhood Markets (HOOD), which soared nearly 11% to lead the S&P 500 Wednesday on news it is expanding its offerings in prediction markets, were up a further 1% in premarket trading.
Jefferies Financial Group (JEF) stock was down 1% following a Financial Times report the SEC was probing what the firm had told investors about its exposure to now-collapsed car parts company First Brands.
After slipping just over 1% Wednesday, shares of Alphabet (GOOGL) resumed their ascent after the Google parent recently unveiled its advanced Gemini 3 AI model, rising 1% before the bell. Alphabet entered trading Friday with a market capitalization of $3.87 trillion, having surpassed that of Microsoft (MSFT) last week, and is on the cusp of joining Nvidia (NVDA) and Apple (AAPL) in the $4 trillion market cap club.