Stocks posted solid gains as Wall Street put the finishing touches on its best monthly performance of the year.
The S&P 500 rose 0.6% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4%. Both indexes closed out November with their best monthly performances of the year. The Nasdaq added 0.8%.
Friday was an abbreviated trading day, with stocks closing at 1 p.m. ET and the bond market an hour later.
Investors were looking to see how much shoppers are willing to spend on gifts for the holidays, with forecasts that shoppers could break spending records in 2024, with the typical consumer expected to spend more than $1,000, a 14% increase from last year. Black Friday unofficially kicked off the holiday shopping season, although retailers had been offering early deals for weeks.
Macy’s and Best Buy each gained around 2%, while Apple rose 1.1%. The technology giant is hoping recently added artificial intelligence features are enough to entice consumers to treat themselves or their relatives to a new iPhone for the holidays.
“Black Friday officially kicks off an important holiday season for Apple as its flagship iPhone 16 represents the beginning of its Apple Intelligence launch with the release of 18.2 likely next week,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a Nov. 29 research note.
He added, “Our view is Apple’s AI rollout over the next few months kick-starts a new era for Cupertino as ultimately hundreds of AI driven apps get built by developers on top of the building blocks of Apple Intelligence.”
The Dow and S&P 500 in November
The Dow rose 7.5% in November, easily its best month of 2024. The Walt Disney Co. has the biggest percentage gain for the month at 22.1%, but the price-weighted index also got a boost from Goldman Sachs, up 17.5% to $608.57 and Salesforce, up more than 13% to $329.99.
The S&P 500 gained 5.7% this month, driven by Tesla and other stocks that received a boost from Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election.
Discover Financial Services leads a list of financials stocks that had a good November, up nearly 23% for the month despite a small loss Friday. Investors believe the credit card company’s merger with Capital One has a greater chance of going through under a Trump administration and overall the financial services industry faces less restrictive oversight.
Tesla shares rose 3.7% Friday and posted a monthly increase of more than 38%. The electric vehicle maker is expected to benefit from CEO Elon Musk’s support of Trump.
Musk also gave a boost to Hasbro shares after he triggered takeover speculation when he asked in a post on X how much the toy and game company was worth. Hasbro, which owns the role-playing game Dungeon & Dragons, rose 2%.
Bond yields fell, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipping to 4.19%.
Bitcoin ends month near $100,000
Bitcoin, which recently made a run at $100,000 before dropping back, briefly rose back above $98,000 but was recently trading around $97,300.
Global markets mostly fell. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.4% after the government reported that inflation in Tokyo, considered an indicator for national trends, was 2.6% in November, up from 1.8% last month mainly due to a surge in fresh food prices.
Chinese markets advanced. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 0.3%. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Composite index rose 0.9%. Gains in retailers’ stocks drove market gains after a two-day meeting in Beijing focused on promoting consumption ended on Thursday.
