Updated 2 min read
In This Article:
US stocks were trading higher on Friday to kick off a shortened trading session, with the focus on incoming president Donald Trump’s tariff agenda and the Black Friday shopping rush crucial to retailers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way higher early Friday, rising about 0.3%, while S&P 500 (^GSPC) added 0.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose about 0.5%, after all three indexes pulled back from record highs on Wednesday.
The last trading day in November sees the major gauges on track for monthly wins, despite a pullback in the rally spurred by Trump’s decisive election victory. The S&P 500 is holding near its latest record high and will score its best month since February if an indicated 5% gain holds.
But a quiet session on Wall Street is in the cards as markets reopen after the Thanksgiving break, with Friday’s trading set to end early at 1 p.m. ET.
Investors continued to weigh the likely fallout — and impact of inflation — from the president-elect’s vow to impose hefty new tariffs on top US trading partners Mexico, Canada, and China. Hopes for a softening in that plan got a boost as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she’s confident that a tariff war can be averted after a phone call with Trump.
Elsewhere on the trade front, optimism grew that looming US curbs on China chips will be less tough than expected. ASML (ASML) and other European chip-related stocks rose after Bloomberg reported Thursday that the Biden administration is weighing fresh restrictions that would stop short of earlier proposals.
Shares of Microsoft were lagging the broader market, falling about 0.9% after news late Wednesday said the company is facing a broad inquiry from the FTC.
Meanwhile, investors are keeping a watchful eye on Black Friday sales, the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season. Eyes are on how successful retailers will be at energizing Americans to buy in stores, given financially squeezed consumers have turned cautious on discretionary spending.
Analysts are predicting a solid season, though not as robust as last year. Shares of Target (TGT), Walmart (WMT), and Best Buy (BBY) edged into the green in premarket trading.
LIVE 4 updates
-
Microsoft stock slips after FTC probe revealed, analyst says ‘not a complete shocker’
Microsoft stock (MSFT) was down about 0.8% early Friday after news broke late Wednesday that the Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad antitrust probe into the tech giant.
But at least one Wall Street analyst sees the news coming as no surprise and expects changes at the FTC under the Trump administration to make antitrust worries in the tech space fade away.
“In our view as the dark days for tech with Lina [Khan] at the FTC appear numbered now with a Trump White House, it is not a complete shocker that Wednesday after the bell the FTC announced a broad sweeping investigation into Microsoft as a final shot across the bow at Big Tech from [Kahn] before she departs,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to clients on Friday.
Ives added that this probe “is much more bark than bite” and will become a secondary concern for the company once President-elect Donald Trump names a new FTC leader.
Current FTC Chair Lina Khan has aggressively pursued antitrust actions against tech giants, including Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), and now Microsoft.
The stocks of Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet are all trailing the S&P 500’s 26% year-to-date gain.
Alphabet is currently facing the most serious threat, with a federal judge finding earlier this year the company’s Google search engine was run as an illegal monopoly. Earlier this month, the DOJ asked the company to sell its Chrome browser and divest its Android mobile operating system.
Following Trump’s election win, investor optimism grew that these various antitrust threats would disappear under his administration. Some legal experts, however, are less confident, as Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan reported.
Ives, for his part, sees the recent era in which regulators sought to limit Big Tech deals and scrutinize the world’s largest companies as one that is coming to an end.
“We believe there will be major shifts in policy against Big Tech over the coming years with Trump in the White House and Khan out at the FTC … we believe [it is] just a matter of time and will remove a huge thorn in the side of the tech world,” Ives wrote.
“As someone that has covered tech throughout the Microsoft vs. US Government trial/soap opera for many years in the 1990’s into an ultimate win for Redmond, we believe negotiations and remedies will be much smaller than the fears for Google, Apple, MSFT, Meta and Big Tech.”
-
US stocks open higher on final trading day of November
With US investors looking to square out a strong month for the stock market, all three major indexes opened a holiday-shortened trading session in positive figures.
The blue-chip Dow (^DJI) was up more than 0.3% just moments after the opening bell, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was up 0.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) rose by about 0.1%.
Friday’s move higher in the Dow was led by industrial names Boeing (BA) and Caterpillar (CAT), with both stocks up better than 1.2% in the early going.
-
Good morning. Here’s what’s happening today.
-
Bitcoin, oil higher along with stock futures
With US markets set for a half-day of holiday trading, the two markets giving investors a more normal sense of activity are the more globalized commodities and crypto markets.
And there, things look OK on this Black Friday.
The price of bitcoin (BTC-USD) was up about 2% to trade back above $97,000 early Friday, while oil prices were higher by about 0.7%.
The big news in the oil market is the news on Thursday that OPEC+ would delay its next meeting until Dec. 5 from Dec. 1, taking away any weekend element of surprise for US investors on a big production shift from global oil producers.
Any echoes from the 2014 Thanksgiving weekend move in oil can remain just that.
![i’m-nervous,-too!-[part-2]](https://10xwealthreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/177042-im-nervous-too-part-2-1568x784.jpg)
