Major Wall Street indexes saw weekly gains on Friday, with global equities drifting to their strongest one-month rally since the month of November 2020 during the shortened week due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Oil traders are on their toes as oil futures continued to trade steady as a result of next week’s OPEC+ meeting, that might bring some relief on output cuts in 2024. Gold futures ended higher because the dollar index fell against the other currencies on Friday (24 November 2023).
While Wall Street Indexes saw weekly gains, the data exhibited that the US business activity remained steady in November, however, employment saw a decline in the private sector. MSCI’s index of global shares went up by ~0.12% and is now bracing for monthly gain of ~8.7%. This momentum is supported by the fact that the investors became more confident that US interest rates have now peaked, and the investors are now waiting for the developments regarding the rate cuts and their timings.
On Friday, Dow Jones Industrial Average grew by ~117.12 points, or 0.33%, to 35,390.15, and S&P 500 went up by ~2.72 points, or ~0.06%, to reach 4,559.34. However, Nasdaq Composite saw a decline of ~15.00 points, or 0.11%, to 14,250.86.
Elsewhere, Europe’s benchmark STOXX 600 saw an increase of ~0.4% on Friday and ended higher for the second straight week as Europeans continue to analyse data from Germany and gather clues regarding the country’s economic outlook. Germany’s DAX closed higher, up by ~0.2%.
Coming to the geopolitical news, Israel and Hamas initiated the 4-day ceasefire on Friday and militants released hostages, the first sign regarding the relaxation in the 7-week war.
The US central bank increased the benchmark borrowing costs by over 5% since March 2022 as part of their rate-hike campaign focused on tightening of monetary cycle. Weaker data and weaker inflation in the US provided some to the investors about the rate cuts.
Despite increased optimism throughout the global markets in November, there can be some selling in December moving forward as investors try to position their portfolios for 2024, as per Wall Street analysts. The US 10-year Treasury yields went up to ~4.485%. These rates help set the tone for borrowing costs globally. However, they were comfortably below ~5% milestone which was touched in the previous month.
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