Ever had one of those Fridays where the morning looks fine and then everything goes sideways by lunch? That was Wall Street today.
Stock futures were up early after a softer than expected wholesale inflation report. Nvidia was even up 2.7% before the bell. Then the market opened, chip stocks started falling, and they didn’t really stop. By late morning the Nasdaq was down about 1.7%, and Nvidia had flipped to a 4% loss.
The selling eased in the afternoon. As of about 2:56 p.m. ET, the Nasdaq was down 0.93% and the S&P 500 was down 0.51%, while the Dow was flat, according to Reuters.
Where the indexes stood
Here are the latest timed numbers we could confirm, from Reuters at about 2:56 p.m. ET:
| Index | Level | Change |
|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 | 7,553.53 | -38.87 (-0.51%) |
| Nasdaq Composite | 25,129.60 | -236.49 (-0.93%) |
| Dow Jones Industrial Average | 52,291.73 | -5.36 (-0.01%) |
The low point came earlier. At 11:23 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq was down 1.74% and the S&P 500 was down 1.01%, per a Reuters report carried by Rallies.ai. The Russell 2000 of small companies was off 0.62% around midday, per Yahoo Finance.
The weird part: it’s still a good week. The S&P 500 closed last Friday, November 6, at 7,376.86 and the Nasdaq at 24,579.43. Even with today’s drop, both were up a bit more than 2% for the week as of mid-afternoon. Reuters said both were set to snap a four-week losing streak. Most of those gains came from Monday’s big rally, which we covered in US stocks surge despite the Nvidia scandal.
Nvidia had another bad day
Nvidia closed Thursday at $166.19, down 4.34%, after Jensen Huang resigned as CEO. The stock had dropped as low as $148.80 during that session.
Friday started with a bounce. Shares were at $170.67 in premarket trading, up 2.7%, per Yahoo Finance. That didn’t last. By late morning Nvidia was down 4.3%, and at 12:22 p.m. ET it was at $160.70, down 3.3%. Yahoo Finance said the drop pushed its market value below $4 trillion. By about 2:56 p.m. the loss had shrunk to 2.2%, Reuters reported.
Here’s a number that tells you how long this has been going on. Nvidia was on track for its sixth straight weekly decline, the longest streak since October 2012, according to Reuters. It closed at $213.66 on October 29, the day the New York Times first reported on Huang’s ties to Alice Huang. At $160, that’s a drop of about 25% in just over two weeks.
Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial, summed up the mood for Reuters: “there’s been a loss of confidence.”
Things outside the company aren’t helping either. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC this morning, “I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s,” per TheStreet. Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott has asked Huang to testify on December 3, TheStreet reported. If you want the background on how the scandal unfolded, read what the FBI and Trump have said.
The rest of the chip sector got hit harder
This is the part that surprised a lot of people. Nvidia’s rivals fell more than Nvidia did.
Earlier this week, AMD was the stock that went up when Nvidia went down. On Monday it jumped about 12%. Today it went the other way. AMD was down 9.89% at 11:31 a.m. ET, per The Motley Fool. Broadcom was down about 7% in the late morning.
Here’s how the morning looked, by the numbers reported during the session:
- Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: down 6% at 11:23 a.m., down 3.7% by 2:56 p.m. (Reuters)
- AMD: down about 10% in the morning (Reuters, Motley Fool)
- Broadcom: down about 6% to 7% (Reuters, Yahoo Finance)
- Micron and Intel: both down about 5% (Yahoo Finance)
- CoreWeave and Nebius: each down about 10% in the morning (Reuters)
- Cisco: down 5.7% at 11:31 a.m. (Motley Fool)
One chip name went the other way. Cerebras rose about 13% in premarket trading after raising its fourth-quarter core revenue forecast to $310 million to $330 million, well above the $271.2 million analysts expected, per Yahoo Finance.
So why would AMD fall harder than Nvidia? There’s no single answer from the reports. The simplest read is that investors sold the whole AI chip group at once. When fund managers cut their exposure to AI hardware, they don’t just sell one stock, and the ones with the biggest run-ups usually get sold the hardest.
Bond yields didn’t help
The other thing weighing on stocks was the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield reached as high as 5.17% on Friday, its highest since October, per Yahoo Finance. It closed Thursday at 5.12%.
Why does that matter to your stocks? When a safe government bond pays you more than 5% a year, growth stocks that trade on future profits look less attractive. Tech gets hit first, and that’s what you saw today.
The dollar was strong too. The dollar index rose to 103.35, its highest level since April 2025, Reuters reported.
What the PPI report did (and didn’t do)
The October producer price index came out at 8:30 a.m. ET. Wholesale prices rose 0.3% for the month, below the 0.4% forecast, which is why futures went up early. But the yearly rate climbed to 6.5%, the largest since November 2022, and core prices rose 0.5% for a second month in a row, according to the BLS. We broke that down in our October PPI report article.
That came three days after a hotter than expected CPI report, so the Fed story didn’t change much. Markets still expect a quarter-point rate hike at the December 8 and 9 meeting, with roughly a 10% chance of a bigger half-point move, based on CME FedWatch data cited by Reuters.
Molly Brooks, US rates strategist at TD Securities, told Reuters: “Inflation is stubbornly high and the Fed’s going to need to act a little bit quicker and a little bit more aggressively.”
Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told CNBC that “the central bank has definitely got work to do to continue to reestablish its credibility,” per TheStreet.
Other things that moved today
- Bitcoin fell below $70,000 for the first time in nearly three months, Yahoo Finance reported. It was at $68,867.33 at 10:25 a.m. ET, down 3.84%, per TheStreet.
- The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, climbed above 20 in the morning, per Yahoo Finance.
- Oil was quiet. US crude slipped 0.34% to $88.44 a barrel, Reuters reported.
- Modine jumped more than 27% on reports of acquisition talks with Samsung, per TheStreet and The Motley Fool.
What to watch next week
The big date is Tuesday, November 17, when Nvidia reports its third-quarter results. The release is expected around 4:20 p.m. ET and the call starts at 5 p.m. ET. It will be Colette Kress’s first call as interim CEO, and she is still the CFO too. The company guided for about $108 billion in revenue, plus or minus 2%.
If the numbers are good and big customers haven’t pulled orders, the chip sector could get some relief. If there’s any sign of lost business because of the Huang mess, you’ll probably see another day like today, or worse. For a full rundown of the stock and the analyst downgrades, read how far Nvidia stock fell after Huang resigned and what Jensen Huang might do with his $135 billion in Nvidia stock.
If all this chip drama is making you nervous about your portfolio, our guide to defensive stocks in an AI bull market is a good place to start.
