- Wall Street is hoping to end November on a strong note after four consecutive weeks of success.
- Holiday shoppers will be looking for Cyber Monday deals after online spending on Black Friday soared compared to last year.
- Seventeen hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released on Sunday.
Here are the key news investors need to start the trading day:
Wall Street is hoping to end November on a high note after U.S. stocks posted four consecutive weeks of positive results. The three major U.S. indexes rose last week: The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3%, the S&P 500 rose 1% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.9%. Stocks have taken a step higher in recent weeks as bond yields have fallen. Traders will be watching holiday retail spending trends, new home sales data expected on Monday and personal consumption spending inflation data expected on Thursday, among other potential catalysts this week. Follow live market updates here.
Buyers have at least another day of offers ahead of them. Holiday bargain hunters will be looking for discounts to mark Cyber Monday, while retailers will try to get a snapshot of how they fared during one of the most important shopping periods of the year. While Black Friday deals began days or weeks earlier than usual this year, e-commerce spending on the day itself increased 7.5% year-over-year, according to data from Adobe Analytics. Retailers have had to get more creative this year to get consumers to open their wallets as shoppers become more accustomed to deals after a period of sustained inflation.
Seventeen more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released on Sunday. This brings the number of hostages released in the first three days of a four-day ceasefire with Israel to 41. US President Joe Biden is, among other things, pushing for a longer break in fighting to enable the release of more prisoners. Meanwhile, Elon Musk visited Israel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces backlash for promoting an anti-Semitic post on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk reportedly plans to set up his company SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in the Gaza Strip. Follow live updates on the conflict here.
The box office saw solid success on Thanksgiving. Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” topped the box office during the five-day period, bringing in an estimated $42 million. Apple’s epic film biography “Napoleon,” which is distributed by Sony, also grossed around $32.5 million. The weekend continued to be a disappointing box office success for Disney. His latest animated film, “Wish,” grossed $31.7 million, below the $45 million to $55 million expected by analysts.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, will cut hundreds of jobs in its gaming division. The company had invested billions of dollars in the unit to take on market leader Tencent. ByteDance will cut jobs in its Nuverse gaming segment but will not close the business entirely, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Mobile gaming companies have struggled to regain the consumer attention they enjoyed during the depths of the Covid pandemic.
—CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Rebecca Picciotto, Matt Clinch, Sarah Whitten and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
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