• Retailers in focus as holiday season begins
• Tech stocks recover, but Nasdaq ends with monthly losses
• Data center cooling issue disrupts futures trading

Nov 28 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks climbed on Friday in thin trading volume during a shortened session after Thanksgiving, driven by gains in retail and a recovery in tech stocks.

Expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut in December strengthened throughout the week, helping underpin sentiment across equity markets.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) , opens new tab rose 0.61%, to 47,716.42 points, the S&P 500 (.SPX) , opens new tab gained 0.54%, to 6,849.09 points and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) , opens new tab added 0.65%, to 23,365.69.

All of the major S&P 500 sectors were up except healthcare, with pharmaceutical Eli Lilly (LLY.N) , opens new tab down 2.6%.

Intel (INTC.O) , opens new tab helped lead the S&P 500 with a 10.2% gain after a TF International Securities analyst said the company would begin shipping Apple's (AAPL.O) , opens new tab lowest-end M processor as early as 2027.

INDEXES NOTCH WEEKLY GAINS, MIXED FOR MONTH

The three main indexes posted weekly gains. The S&P 500 rose 3.73%, the Nasdaq gained 4.91%, and the Dow climbed 3.18%. The S&P and the Dow swung to marginally positive for the month after Friday's prices settled.

But the Nasdaq closed down 1.51% this month, reflecting growing concerns about stretched AI and tech valuations, with investors taking profits and reducing exposure.

"This is a light volume post-holiday session, as those tend to be, with not much activity," said Cole Smead, CEO at Smead Capital Management. "But I think everyone woke up over the past weeks to the fact that the outcome of AI is still very unknown."

Futures trading was temporarily disrupted in the morning following a CME Group outage that had temporarily frozen currencies, commodities and equity contracts around the globe.

CME's stock futures offerings linked to U.S. stocks are typically heavily traded before U.S. markets open, with investors relying on them to gauge trends and directions.

CME said it was due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centers.

Shares of CME Group (CME.O) , opens new tab were marginally higher.

"We're kind of lucky today. It was such a low-volume day, but it could have had a much bigger effect," said Joe Saluzzi, partner, co-founder and head of equity market structure research and co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.

"It does point to the risk of these failures and the connectedness to the markets that could cause bigger problems."

This week also kicked off the holiday shopping season, starting with Thanksgiving on Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday - crucial days of sales for big-box retailers.

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-stock-futures-frozen-by-cme-data-center-outage-2025-11-28/