Global stocks headed into a jittery final session of the month as an outage at exchange operator CME Group halted trading in many futures on currencies, commodities, Treasuries and stocks, further draining market liquidity.

The outage at CME data centres came with U.S. investors due to return from the Thanksgiving holiday for a shortened session on Friday.

Wall Street futures were unavailable because of the outage, while TSX futures held steady as investors awaited domestic GDP data.

U.S. stock and bond markets will close in early afternoon after the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday.

“Usually you expect volatility in September and October, we’ve had it in November, but recovered most of it,” Lombard Odier economist Samy Chaar said.

“We were pricing the probability of a [Fed interest rate] cut in December of around 30 per cent and we’re now over 80 per cent. And that, I think, is a very strong reason for the month-end rally,” he said.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.03 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.06 per cent, Germany’s DAX edged down 0.04 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.12 per cent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.17 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slid 0.34 per cent.

Brent crude oil futures inched up as drawn-out Russia-Ukraine peace talks kept geopolitical risks elevated, while traders kept one eye on the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Sunday for clues about potential output changes.

But West Texas Intermediate crude futures were frozen by the system outage at exchange (WTI) operator CME Group.

Front-month Brent crude futures for January, which expire on Friday, rose 0.4 per cent to US$63.60 a barrel. The more active February contract traded at US$63.10, up 23 US cents.

“The market is caught between there being no immediate sanctions relief for Russia, but as slow as negotiations are, there being hope for a future settlement,” said PVM Oil Associates’ analyst John Evans.

In other commodities, spot gold rose 0.1 per cent to US$4,162.59 an ounce. U.S. gold futures were caught in the CME outage.

The Canadian dollar weakened against its U.S. counterpart.

The day range on the loonie was 71.16 US cents to 71.31 US cents in early trading. The Canadian dollar was down about 0.3 per cent against the greenback over the past month.

The U.S. dollar index, which weighs the greenback against a group of currencies, advanced 0.22 per cent to 99.81.

The euro dropped 0.31 per cent to US$1.1560. The British pound declined 0.25 per cent to US$1.3208.

In bonds, the yield on the U.S. 10-year note was last up at 4.006 per cent.

Japan jobless rate, retail sales and industrial production

Germany unemployment, retail sales and CPI

8:30 a.m. ET: Canada’s real GDP and chain prices for Q3. Estimates are annualized rate rises of 0.5 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively.

8:30 a.m. ET: Canada’s monthly real GDP for October.

Also: Ottawa’s budget balance

With Reuters and The Canadian Press