Stock Market Today: Futures Rise After Nvidia Selloff

US stock futures rose on Friday as markets steadied after a turbulent week dominated by the crisis at Nvidia, with Asian shares rebounding and investors weighing whether the worst of the selloff has passed. The calmer tone follows a bruising Thursday in which the chipmaker at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom plunged before clawing back much of its loss, dragging the Nasdaq lower and rattling technology stocks around the world.

Stock futures today pointed to a steadier open on Wall Street. Nasdaq futures and S&P 500 futures each rose more than 0.2 percent in early trading, and Nasdaq 100 contracts were up about 0.4 percent, while futures on the S&P 500 gained around 0.3 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was set for a quieter session, with Dow futures little changed, as traders waited to see whether the bargain hunting that lifted Asia would carry over into the American session. European futures were softer, with EUROSTOXX 50 futures down 0.37 percent, a reminder that the mood is relief rather than confidence.

The rebound is modest, and it comes after real damage. Roughly 450 billion dollars has been wiped off Nvidia’s value since the weekend, according to wire estimates, and the company’s market capitalisation briefly dropped below 4 trillion dollars as revelations about its chief executive rattled investors. The question for Friday is whether the futures gain is the start of a recovery or simply a pause in a selloff that still has further to run.

Stock Futures Today Point Higher After Thursday’s Slide

For readers asking why the stock market is up today, the short answer is that the panic of Thursday afternoon eased overnight. Nvidia shares slid as much as 14 percent during United States trading on Thursday before dip buyers stepped in, leaving the stock just 4.3 percent lower by the close. The Nasdaq recouped much of its ground to finish 0.4 percent lower, a far better outcome than the session had threatened at its worst point. That recovery gave Asian markets a platform to build on, and the steadier footing there has now fed into American futures.

The shape of the week explains the relief. Last week brought a market meltdown sparked by the Republicans’ electoral drubbing in the midterm elections, which stoked fears that tighter regulation could slow the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout that has helped send stocks to record highs this year. The Nvidia revelations then landed on top of that anxiety, turning a nervous market into a frightened one. Friday’s gains reverse only a fraction of those losses, but they break the pattern of each day ending worse than it began.

There are limits to the optimism. Nvidia shares fell a further 3 percent in extended trading after the close, a sign that investors are still working through what the leadership change means for the company. And futures gains of a fraction of a percent are small against the scale of Thursday’s swings. What Friday offers is breathing room, not a verdict.

Nvidia Stock Steadies After a Brutal Thursday

Nvidia stock is the story of the week, and its path on Thursday showed how fast sentiment can turn. Jensen Huang, the leather-jacketed architect of the artificial intelligence boom, resigned as chief executive on Thursday after revelations of two extramarital affairs, including one with a woman accused of spying for China. The resignation ended his 33 years at the helm of the company he co-founded. Nvidia did not give a reason for his departure. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013 after nearly 25 years at companies including Cisco and Microsoft, will serve as interim chief executive while the board searches for a successor, and Huang, 63, also gave up his board seat.

The market reaction was immediate and violent. The stock opened sharply lower, fell as much as 14 percent at its worst, and then recovered as buyers decided the selloff had gone too far. The Times reported that the shares opened 10 percent lower in early trading before regaining some lost ground later in the session. By the close, the damage was a 4.3 percent decline — painful, but far from the collapse that had seemed possible at midday.

The ripple effects spread well beyond Nvidia itself. Shares of Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices, which compete with Nvidia in parts of the AI chip market, rallied more than 5 percent as investors sought potential beneficiaries from the industry leader’s setback. But the company’s customers also felt the strain: South Korea’s Naver extended its declines on Friday, falling 2.75 percent. Huang remains Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, with a stake of about 3.6 percent, according to the company’s most recent filing, so his fortunes and the company’s remain tied together even after his exit.

The deeper worry for investors is not the affairs themselves but what the investigations around them might mean for the business. United States authorities have scrutinised Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that buys chips from Nvidia, and concluded that it was a Chinese intelligence asset. The controversy has raised questions about whether the investigations will lead to tighter oversight of chip exports, and that uncertainty will continue to dominate market sentiment as the situation unfolds. It is too early to call the artificial intelligence trade one way or another, as volatility remains high, and traders know that a single headline on export controls could reverse Friday’s calm in minutes.

Asia Rebounds as the AI Trade Finds Its Footing

Asian stocks staged a tentative rebound early on Friday after the sharp selloff, with the region’s bruised technology shares leading the way. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.26 percent, reversing some of its 1.3 percent fall from the previous session. South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.35 percent, Japan’s Nikkei added 1.4 percent, and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.4 percent, led by a gain of more than 2 percent for South Korean shares.

The pattern was consistent across the region: technology shares gained in early trading, lost some steam as the session wore on, but stayed in the green. Investors eased back into the sector amid fading concerns that a leadership crisis at Nvidia might derail the broader artificial intelligence trade. The upheaval at Nvidia is testing that trade without, for now, derailing the wider investment boom, and the bargain hunting that followed Thursday’s plunge suggests that many fund managers still believe in the spending cycle behind it.

The recovery is real but fragile. Asian technology stocks have been whipsawed all week, and the same investors who bought the dip on Friday were selling in fear 24 hours earlier. What has changed is the sense that the Nvidia story, however dramatic, is a company crisis rather than an industry collapse. Whether that reading holds depends on what the investigations uncover and on who the board picks to lead the company next.

Treasury Yields and the Federal Reserve Question

While stocks steadied, the bond market told a different story. United States Treasury yields climbed, with the two-year yield hitting a one-month high and lifting the dollar as investors weighed the prospect of an outsized 50-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve next month. The two-year yield peaked at 4.8920 percent in the early Asian session, while the benchmark 10-year yield rose to a three-week high of 5.1433 percent.

The move matters because it changes the arithmetic for every other market. Higher yields make borrowing more expensive for companies and households, and they raise the return investors can earn without taking any risk in stocks at all. The Federal Reserve news driving the move is the growing sense that the central bank may need to move more aggressively than expected: investors now see a 14.5 percent chance of a jumbo 50-basis-point hike in December, up from zero a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

That repricing has been building for days, and it sits uneasily beside the stock market’s relief. A market that is rising because the Nvidia panic has faded is still a market facing higher rates, and the two forces pull in opposite directions. The dollar’s climb alongside yields adds another headwind for American exporters and for emerging markets that borrow in dollars. For now, the futures market is looking past the rates story to the Nvidia story, but the December meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee is now the date that matters most on the calendar.

Oil, the Dollar and the Strait of Hormuz

Energy markets added their own tension to the Friday session. Brent crude futures and United States crude each fell more than 0.3 percent, to 95.45 dollars and 88.39 dollars a barrel, as traders balanced the Strait of Hormuz risks against a softer demand outlook. Brent had held near 96 dollars a barrel the day before, and the pullback suggests that, for the moment, oil traders are more focused on the global economy than on the waterway.

The strait itself gave them reason to worry. Four oil tankers were hit by explosions in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, Iran’s military said, adding that the vessels had ignored warnings and entered what it considers restricted areas of the strategic waterway. The incident came on the same day that President Donald Trump pulled Vice President JD Vance off the Iran negotiations and declared that the United States needs no deal with Tehran, a decision that leaves the American naval blockade in place and the diplomatic channel idle.

The dollar’s rise alongside Treasury yields completes the picture. A stronger dollar tends to weigh on commodity prices and on the earnings of American multinationals, and it has been climbing as the rate-hike bets have grown. The combination of a firm dollar, high yields, and oil near 95 dollars a barrel is not the backdrop of an easy market, and it helps explain why Friday’s stock gains are measured rather than euphoric.

What to Watch When Wall Street Opens

The first test comes at the opening bell, when traders will see whether the overnight futures gains survive contact with American buyers. The direction of Nvidia stock will set the tone: a steady session would confirm that the worst of the panic has passed, while a fresh slide would drag the Nasdaq and the wider technology sector down with it. Beyond the open, any headline on the investigations into the Nvidia affair, or on tighter oversight of chip exports to China, could move the whole market. The December meeting of the Federal Reserve, where traders now price a small but growing chance of a half-point hike, will hang over every session until it happens. And the Strait of Hormuz remains a live risk, with tankers, warships, and missile batteries operating in close quarters and no diplomatic channel currently working to lower the temperature.

Friday’s futures gain is a welcome change after a week that gave investors little to cheer. The Nvidia selloff has eased, Asia has bounced, and the market has found its footing, at least for a morning. But the forces that drove the week — a leadership crisis at the world’s most important chipmaker, a Federal Reserve that may hike harder than expected, and a standoff in the strait through which the world’s oil flows — have not gone away. They will still be there when the opening bell rings.

Source: CNBC