The Rundown Black Friday Sales to Top 2024, Baidu Aims to Be China's New AI Chip King
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Nov 28, 2025 A major CME outage caused chaos in futures trading. Black Friday sales projections hint at AI transforming the holiday shopping experience. Baidu reveals an ambitious five-year plan for its new AI chips, taking aim at giants like Nvidia and Huawei. Insights into cryptocurrency market movements, including a bounce in Bitcoin and Ethereum, also highlight investor sentiment. Finally, a look at how Macy's Parade profits from broadcast deals adds an unexpected twist to holiday celebrations.
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Late-Month Rally Narrowly Saved November
- The market rallied late in November, erasing most of an earlier sell-off and leaving the S&P near break-even for the month.
- Zaid Admani notes a 0.4% gain would finish November in the green, showing how thin recent gains were.
CME Outage Halted Global Futures
- A cooling-system failure at a CME data center halted trading across many global futures markets for a period.
- Zaid Admani emphasizes equities exchanges were unaffected, so typical stock trading continued normally.
Holiday Sales Grow But Spending Shifts
- Black Friday and Thanksgiving online sales showed solid growth, with Thanksgiving online at $8.6B and Black Friday expected at $18B in the U.S.
- Retailers expect record foot traffic but potentially lower spend per shopper due to economic concerns and higher prices.