US: Stocks finish mixed at end of bumper November

MAJOR Wall Street indexes saw a mixed performance on the last day of November, with the Dow surging almost 1.5 per cent and the Nasdaq slipping after fresh inflation data was published.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a new high for the year and finished up 1.5 per cent at 35,950.89, while the broad-based S&P 500 rose by 0.4 per cent to 4,567.80.

The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 0.2 per cent to 14,226.22.

The Dow and the S&P 500 are both up almost nine per cent this month, while the Nasdaq has risen by more than 10 per cent, as traders piled back into equity markets.

While the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of annual inflation recorded a steep drop in October, the data was less dramatic when volatile food and energy prices were stripped out.

So-called “core inflation” still rose at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent in October, the Commerce Department said. This was down slightly from a month earlier.

“The technology sector is very sensitive to interest rates,” Cresset Capital chief investment officer Jack Ablin told AFP.

“The core at 3.5 per cent is still a little bit higher than what bond investors had hoped,” he added.

Among individual stocks, cloud software firm Salesforce saw its share price surge 9.4 per cent after strong earnings results for the third quarter.

SEE ALSO

US: Wall St opens higher on peak interest rate bets

And Tesla shares fell 1.7 per cent on the day the electric vehicle manufacturer began rolling out its Cybertruck to customers. AFP