Matteo Colombo
U.S. stocks ended mixed while Treasury yields rose, as market participants returned from the Thanksgiving holiday to a truncated Black Friday trading session.
Equity markets closed at 1300 ET while bond markets will shut at 1400 ET.
Wall Street’s major averages made small moves. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (COMP.IND) slipped 0.11% to close at 14,250.85 points. The benchmark S&P 500 (SP500) settled 0.06% higher at 4,559.34 points, while the blue-chip Dow (DJI) added 0.33% to finish at 35,390.15 points.
Of the 11 S&P sectors, nine closed in positive territory, led by Health Care. Communication Services and Technology were the two losers.
An ongoing bond sell-off in Europe put some pressure on the fixed-income markets at home. The longer-end 30-year yield (US30Y) was up 3 basis points to 4.61%, while the 10-year yield (US10Y) was up 6 basis points to 4.48%. The shorter-end more rate-sensitive 2-year yield (US2Y) was up 3 basis points to 4.95%.
See how Treasury yields have done across the curve at the Seeking Alpha bond page.
Friday’s economic calendar only had the S&P Global Flash U.S. Composite PMI on the docket, which showed that private sector employment in November fell for first time since June 2020.
“Markets are mixed in today’s shortened trading session against the backdrop of a light economic calendar. Today’s post-Thanksgiving flash U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index from S&P Global depicted continued economic expansion even though employers reduced their staffing for the first time in three and a half years. While America celebrated the holiday, the European Union’s data was far gloomier, pointing to another quarter of economic contraction,” José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers (IBKR), said.
The benchmark S&P 500 (SP500) posted its fourth straight weekly gain, its best such streak since early June. The advance has come amid a sustained rally largely driven by a general consensus that the Federal Reserve was done hiking rates. The positive sentiment has attracted the biggest inflows from retail investors to stocks since early 2022.
“Retail sentiment appeared buoyant following the strong market rally in November. Retail investors net bought +$4.8B of cash equities this past week, +2.3 standard deviations above the last 12M average and the highest weekly inflow recorded since April 2022,” JPMorgan’s Peng Cheng said.
“ETFs saw an inflow of $2.7B. Unlike the previous week, broad-based equity ETFs including S&P (SP500), Nasdaq (COMP.IND), and Russell (RTY) all saw below-average demand, potentially due to retail investors’ preference for single names,” Cheng added.
Among Friday’s active movers, iRobot (IRBT) surged nearly 40% on a report that Amazon’s (AMZN) planned $1.4B acquisition of the maker of robot vacuum cleaner Roomba was set for European approval.
