Stock Futures Point Mostly Higher After Lengthy Trading Halt; Major Indexes Look to Register Best Week Since June

Stock futures pointed mostly higher after lengthy tech outage halted trading on Black Friday, with major indexes poised to record their best week since June.

With less than an hour before the opening bell, futures associated with the tech-heavy Nasdaq and benchmark S&P 500 were up a respective 0.3% and 0.2%, while those affiliated with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average were little changed.

Numerous CME Group (CME) futures and options exchanges were down for several hours overnight and early Friday “due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers,” it said. CME Group stock pared premarket losses after trading in stock and commodities futures resumed around 8:30 a.m. ET, and recently was down 0.1%.

WTI crude futures, the U.S. oil benchmark, were 0.4% higher at $58.90 per barrel and gold futures were up 0.2% at $4,210 per ounce as the commodities once again started trading. Bonds trading resumed trading earlier, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note recently ticked higher from Wednesday’s close to just over 4.00%.

Unaffected was Bitcoin, which was trading near the day’s high around $91,800, while the U.S. dollar index, which tracks the performance of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, was little changed at 99.65.

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 were slightly 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 markets, were up a further 1% before the bell.

Jefferies Financial Group (JEF) stock was down 1.5% 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 more than 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.