Nov. 12th Market Overview: OpenAI Raised Half Of What It Planned

Happy Thursday

What a zoo.

Jensen Huang ran Nvidia for 33 years, and this morning he resigned before the opening bell. I figured that would make for an ugly day across the whole market, and it mostly didn't. Nvidia won back more than half of its opening loss, and what pulled stocks down after lunch was the bond market, where yields kept climbing. The AI buildout depends on a lot more than one man.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Nvidia’s Trouble Stayed Mostly With Nvidia

Nvidia $NVDA lost its founder this morning and opened down hard. Then everyday investors bought about $111 million of it in the first half hour, more than on any morning Vanda Research has tracked. The people who lend Nvidia money barely reacted, and the VIX, the market’s fear gauge, sat right at its average for the year. That makes sense to me, because the big chip buyers pay out of their own profits and still need the chips whoever is CEO.

2. Rising Yields Took Back The Midday Rebound

Stocks had worked their way back to about even by lunch, and then the bond market took it away. Trump said he doesn’t need a deal with Iran, oil rose, and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said she leans toward more rate hikes. That pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to about 5.1 percent, which hit small companies hardest and took gold and bitcoin down too. I’d say rates did more damage to the market today than Nvidia did.

3. OpenAI Raised Half Of What It Planned

OpenAI set out to raise as much as $30 billion and came back with $15 billion, CNBC’s David Faber reported. It also took a lower price than it wanted, a $1.25 trillion valuation instead of $1.4 trillion. Nvidia has at least $30 billion in OpenAI, so that’s one more thing on the interim CEO’s desk. Anthropic goes public next week, and that will tell us whether investors are being picky about OpenAI or about AI in general.

Market Overview

Index Performance (Nasdaq vs NVDA today)

Stock Spotlight

Super Micro Computer $SMCI ( ▼ 10.42% )  
fell after Bloomberg reported a new Justice Department inquiry. Prosecutors are looking at whether groups tied to Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy in the Nvidia scandal, helped divert its AI servers to China.

Broadcom $AVGO ( ▲ 5.21% )  
rose as investors bet that some of Nvidia's chip orders will move its way.

AMD $AMD ( ▲ 5.27% )  
is higher since Monday, when the Huang story broke. It's the only other company selling a complete AI server rack. Futurum Group's Daniel Newman told CNBC it couldn't supply everyone if Nvidia's customers all switched.

CoreWeave $CRWV ( ▼ 8.46% )  
gave back part of Wednesday's big gain, and IREN $IREN fell with it. Both rent out Nvidia chips, and Nvidia put roughly $2 billion into CoreWeave over the past year.

Big Name Updates

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 5.51% )  
slipped to third among the world's most valuable companies, behind Apple and Microsoft. Huang's $140 billion stake sits mostly in trusts he co-owns with his wife. Lawyers told CNBC that makes it hard for either of them to sell quickly.

Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 0.17% )  
is investigating an outage that left users unable to reach their Exchange Online mailboxes. The stock gave up some of its earlier gain after the company posted the notice.

Apple $AAPL ( ▼ 0.01% )  
got pulled into the CEO search when Trump posted that Tim Cook, Apple's executive chair, should take the Nvidia job. Analyst Dan Ives also named Cook as a dark horse candidate in a note to clients.

Intel $INTC ( ▼ 1.55% )  
fell along with Marvell $MRVL. Nvidia invested $5 billion in Intel last September and about $2 billion in Marvell.

Other Notable Company News

LVMH $LVMUY ( ▼ 0.31% )  
rose in Paris after Burberry reported better sales than expected, which lifted European luxury stocks.

Taiwan Semiconductor $TSM ( ▼ 1.94% )  
manufactures Nvidia's chips, and its shares fell in Taiwan trading.

ASML $ASML ( ▼ 2.64% )  
slipped in Europe. The Dutch company supplies the machines that make the most advanced chips.

Synopsys $SNPS ( ▼ 0.29% )  
fell. Nvidia bought a $2 billion stake late last year, and Nvidia's new chair, Harvey Jones, is a former Synopsys CEO.

Lumentum $LITE ( ▼ 3.7% )  
and Coherent $COHR both dropped. Nvidia put about $2 billion into each over the past year.

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Sector Watch

Bond Market

The 2-year Treasury yield, the one most tied to what traders expect from the Fed, rose to about 4.87 percent. That follows Tuesday's rise, its biggest in one day since April 2025. The 30-year is near 5.44 percent.

Policy Watch

Fed

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said he had hoped inflation would be shrinking by now as tariffs passed through and oil came down, and it hasn't. He spoke two days after October's hot inflation report, and several Fed officials now say they lean toward raising rates again.

• Weekly jobless claims came in at 200,000, a bit above the 195,000 economists expected, and the four-week average held at 195,250. A job market that steady gives the Fed room to raise rates.

Nvidia In Washington

Semafor reports the Justice Department has three investigations underway. One looks at Nvidia itself for possible antitrust violations, and the other two involve Megaspeed and Super Micro. Lawmakers in both parties are also calling for tighter limits on chip sales to China, which would affect every chipmaker that sells there.

• The administration is reportedly considering firing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, per Yahoo Finance. His department enforces the chip export rules. Earlier in the day the White House said Trump has "complete confidence" in him.

• Senate and House Democrats opened a probe into Trump's December 2025 decision to let Nvidia sell H200 chips to China in return for a cut of the sales. Democrats take control of Congress in January.

International

Trump took Vice President JD Vance off the Iran talks and assigned him to domestic issues. The Journal had reported that Vance wrote to a top Iranian security official asking for a meeting. So the person leading the negotiations is now working on something else. Brent crude rose to about $96 a barrel, up from $92.76 at Wednesday's close.

What to Watch

*AI is becoming physical

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Anthropic Prices Its IPO Wednesday

Anthropic expects to price its shares Nov. 18 and start trading Nov. 19. Nvidia agreed to buy $10 billion of a $26 billion private sale that closes right after the offering, subject to conditions. If Kress confirms that purchase on Tuesday, the IPO goes into pricing with one less open question.

Huang's Date With Congress

House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast says Huang agreed to testify before Thanksgiving, likely under oath, and they're still negotiating the day. It isn't settled whether the hearing will be public or behind closed doors. A public one would put every answer about chip exports to China in front of investors in real time.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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