U.S. stocks lift on the last day of November as Wall Street eagerly awaits the results of Black Friday

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and needs slightly larger gains to avoid its first down month since April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 138 points, and the Nasdaq gained 0.3%.

Coinbase Global added 3.6% as bitcoin rose above $92,000 after falling to around $81,000 last week. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency remains well below its all-time high of around $125,000 that it hit in early October.

Most technology stocks posted gains, with Meta Platforms up 1.4% and Micron Technology up 2.8%. But Nvidia, the most valuable stock on the market, was down 1% and on track for a double-digit loss for the month. Shares of Oracle, another of the rising companies that suffered this month, fell by 2.3%.

Wall Street was operating on a shortened schedule on Friday after being closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. Stock trading closes at 1 p.m. ET.

Earlier, Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were halted for hours due to a technical issue at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. CME said the issue was linked to a power outage at the CyrusOne data centre.

After falling earlier this month as investors worried that many tech stocks were rising due to the AI ​​craze, stocks have risen for four straight trading sessions on hopes the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again at its meeting next month.

Recent comments from Federal Reserve officials have given traders more confidence that the central bank will cut interest rates again at its meeting that ends on December 10. Traders are betting on a roughly 87% probability that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next month, according to data from CME Group.

The central bank, which has cut interest rates twice this year in hopes of supporting a slowing labor market, faces an increasingly difficult decision on interest rates as inflation rises and the labor market slows. Lowering interest rates further could help support an economy with weak employment, but could also lead to higher inflation. The latest round of corporate earnings reports were mostly positive, but economic data was mixed.

Minutes from the Fed’s last meeting in October indicate that there are likely to be strong divisions among policymakers over the Fed’s next move.

Treasury yields remained mostly flat, with the 10-year yield at 4.01%.

In European trading, the German DAX index rose by 0.3% as traders awaited inflation data scheduled to be released later today.

The British FTSE 100 index rose 0.3% thanks to gains in energy and mining stocks. The CAC 40 index in France also rose by 0.2%.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed up 0.2% at 50,253.91, rebounding from losses suffered earlier in the day. The data showed that housing construction in Japan rose by 3.2% in October compared to the same period last year, the first annual increase since March. The figure defied market expectations of a 5.2% decline and reversed a 7.3% decline in September.

South Korea’s Kospi index fell 1.5% after the country’s industrial production fell 4% month-on-month in October, more than the 1.1% decline in September.