Nov. 9th Market Overview: Broadest in Nearly a Year

Happy Monday

The S&P 500 had its best day since April, a good bounce after last week’s nastiness. Cheaper oil helped for sure, so did buyers who decided the AI selloff had gone too far. Nvidia’s rough weekend couldn’t keep the rest of the chip stocks down, and I liked seeing investors treat Nvidia’s mess as Nvidia’s problem.

What do you think about the Jensen situation? Personally I think it will blow over within weeks.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. The Rally Was the Broadest in Nearly a Year

More than 430 stocks in the S&P 500 were higher late in the day, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Industrials led every other sector, with GE Vernova and Eaton near the top, and that’s usually a sign investors feel good about the economy. Smaller companies in the Russell 2000 did even better than the big indexes. The Dow is back above its Election Day close, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are still a little short.

2. Chip Stocks Rallied Without Nvidia

Nvidia was the only one of the 30 stocks in the PHLX Semiconductor index to fall today, on a day the iShares Semiconductor ETF had its best session since July. Nvidia’s board opened an investigation after CEO Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with a woman U.S. intelligence officials believe is a Chinese spy. The stock has now lost about $1.5 trillion in market value since its Oct. 6 peak. The Journal’s Heard on the Street column expects tighter limits on chip sales to China out of this, which would leave more chips for U.S. buyers like Amazon and Microsoft.

3. Oil Fell to Its Lowest Since August

U.S. crude traded below $87 a barrel after President Trump said over the weekend that new strikes on Iran were “highly unlikely.” Energy was the only S&P 500 sector in the red, adding to last week’s losses. Trump was set to meet Qatar’s prime minister today, and Qatar is one of the countries trying to broker a deal with Tehran. Oil is trading like a deal is coming, though nothing has been signed yet.

Market Overview

Index Performance

Stock spotlight

Advanced Micro Devices $AMD ( ▲ 14.42% )  
led the big chipmakers higher. Oppenheimer upgraded it to outperform, its version of a buy, with a $600 price target, saying AMD is becoming a lasting supplier of AI chips.

AST SpaceMobile $ASTS ( ▲ 15.08% )  
rose after teaming up with Rakuten on a Japanese venture that will get up to about $1 billion in government money over roughly three years. The money goes toward a satellite network that connects straight to regular smartphones in Japan.

General Motors $GM ( ▲ 4.05% )  
moves its listing to the Nasdaq on Nov. 17 and could join the Nasdaq-100 as soon as December. Citi figures that would bring about $4.6 billion of buying from index funds, and GM would be the cheapest stock in the index.

Big name updates

Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 1.18% )  
introduced two new versions of its TPU, the AI chip Google designs in-house to compete with Nvidia. One is built for encrypted computing for government agencies, and the other puts two chips in one package for heavy jobs like coding.

Meta Platforms $META ( ▲ 5.21% )  
made JPMorgan’s Analyst Focus List, the bank’s short list of top picks, with a $940 price target.

Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 6.37% )  
will refund a lot of Cybertruck deposits, because Elon Musk says orders are running far ahead of what it can build before the line shuts down in about eight months. For scale, Tesla has sold about 73,000 Cybertrucks in three years, roughly what Ford sold of its F-Series pickups in October alone.

Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B ( ▲ 0.68% )  
bought back $9.6 billion of its own stock last quarter, even though profits fell.

Other notable company news

Boeing $BA ( ▼ 0.43% )  
plans to cut about 2,500 commercial airplane jobs starting in December, since its push to build 47 of its 737 MAX jets a month won’t reach that pace until next year.

PepsiCo $PEP ( ▲ 0.56% )  
is cutting about 1,000 jobs across its North American food and drink business as it tries to turn things around.

Honda $HMC ( ▲ 0.42% )  
will build a $3 billion plant in Ohio to make more hybrids, adding more than 2,000 jobs when it opens in 2029.

NRG Energy $NRG ( ▲ 10.52% )  
is selling $4 billion of assets and will use the money to pay down debt and buy back $1 billion of stock, with a dividend increase coming in 2027.

Eli Lilly $LLY ( ▲ 4.58% )  
won a recommendation from Canada’s drug agency to cover Kisunla, its early Alzheimer’s treatment, for eligible adults.

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Sector Watch

Bond market

The 10-year Treasury yield barely moved, so bonds sat this rally out. The bond market closes Wednesday for Veterans Day, while stocks trade as usual.

Policy watch

Fed

With Democrats taking the Senate in January, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh probably won’t get to pick his own team. Every Trump nominee to the Fed needs Senate confirmation, and Democrats have opposed almost all of his second-term picks. That means Warsh has to win over governors he didn’t choose, including three Biden appointees and Jerome Powell.

Trade

The White House and Congress are pulling in different directions on Nvidia, and the money on the line is its sales to China and Hong Kong, which came to $7.9 billion last quarter.

• President Trump called Jensen Huang “an honorable guy” and said he’d still be open to bringing him on next week’s trip to Shenzhen, China.

• Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, wants a congressional investigation, and Raymond James thinks the spy story builds support for the MATCH Act, a bill that would further limit sales of chips and chipmaking gear to China.

The part I’d watch most is Megaspeed, the Singapore company Alice Huang helped run. The New York Times says the Commerce Department’s probe of it became a criminal inquiry at the Justice Department after Nvidia asked investigators about it in August 2025. Megaspeed says past reviews found nothing illegal.

International

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Iran’s demands “outrageous and ridiculous” on Sunday, and he doesn’t sound close to a deal. A Qatari official also called reports on the terms false, though talks are still going.

What to Watch

*AI is becoming physical

Robotics and automation are rapidly becoming essential infrastructure across healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and many other industries. "Physical AI" is coming. Learn which seven companies are most positioned to benefit as intelligent robots enter the workforce.

October Inflation Data on Tuesday

Friday’s hot jobs report has more investors betting on a Fed rate hike in December. A cool consumer price index would ease that, and a hot one would back it up. Fed Governor Christopher Waller and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan also speak Tuesday, and wholesale prices come out Friday.

Huang’s Wednesday Deadline

Three House Republicans asked Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing by next week, or offer another date by Wednesday. Don’t expect the board’s own probe to fill in many blanks, since securities rules bar companies from putting classified information in their filings.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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