Stock Futures Up, Trading Halted – Weekly Gains in Sight

Stock futures pointed slightly higher before a tech outage halted trading on Black Fridaywith major indexes poised to record their best week since June.

Futures associated with the tech-heavy Nasdaqbenchmark S&P 500and 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 retailers Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Amazon (AMZN) and Macy’s (M) all pointed higher in premarket trading. The Friday after Thanksgiving has traditionally been one of the busiest shopping days of the year, with many retailers promoting sales and specials.

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 marketswere up a further 1% before the bell.

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.