The Market Wrap, Thursday, November 12, 2026

Stocks slipped Thursday after Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, the Santa Clara chipmaker at the center of the artificial intelligence, or AI, boom, while rising oil prices and interest rates added pressure, closing figures from CNBC and Nasdaq.com show.  The S&P 500 fell 26.98 points, or 0.35%, to 7,592.40.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 189.40 points, or 0.36%, to 52,297.09.  The Nasdaq Composite dropped 100.10 points, or 0.39%, to 25,366.09.  It was not a straight drop.  All three indexes opened lower, traded above Wednesday’s close in the late morning and early afternoon, then faded to finish down, as the accompanying chart of the session shows.

For 401(k) savers, the losses were small.  The bigger worry for households is borrowing costs, which kept rising.

Nvidia was the day’s main market-moving story.  Its shares fell 4.34% to $166.19 after dropping nearly 12% early, Reuters reported.  Nvidia said Huang resigned effective immediately and named finance chief Colette Kress interim CEO while its board searches for a permanent one.  His exit followed reports of an affair with a businesswoman U.S. authorities suspect of spying for China, Reuters reported.  Nvidia will report quarterly results Tuesday, Nov. 17, the company said.  A sudden CEO departure after those reports reasonably explains why investors sold a stock at the center of the AI trade.  The rebound from a nearly 12% early drop to a 4.34% loss may suggest the opening plunge overshot what was then known, especially after the board named an interim chief and said the earnings date still stands.  Even so, a 4.34% decline is a large one-day move in one of the market’s most important companies.

Some other large chipmakers moved the other way.  AMD, also of Santa Clara, rose 5.86%.  Palo Alto’s Broadcom added 5.54%, and Mountain View’s Alphabet 1.79%.  Intel fell 2.08%.  Gains of more than 5% in AMD and Broadcom on the same day Nvidia sold off may reflect investors shifting money toward other suppliers, a rotation that can be rational in a single session and can also run farther than the day’s news justifies.  Nebius, a company that rents out AI computing power, plunged 16.84% after its quarterly report, Reuters said.

Oil and bond yields climbed after President Donald Trump wrote on social media that the U.S. did not need a deal with Iran, Reuters reported.  U.S. crude rose 2.54% to $88.73 a barrel in late trading.  The 10-year Treasury yield, which guides mortgage rates, rose to 5.13% from 4.99% on Tuesday; bond markets were closed Wednesday.  Futures prices, which are bets on where rates will be later, show traders fully expect the Federal Reserve to raise rates at least 25 basis points, or a quarter of a percentage point, in December, Reuters reported.

After the closing bell, San Jose’s Cisco reported record quarterly revenue of $18.5 billion, up 24% from a year earlier, and earnings excluding certain items, or non-GAAP earnings, of $1.40 a share.  Those figures beat Yahoo Finance’s averages of $18.13 billion for revenue, from 22 analysts, and $1.33 for non-GAAP earnings per share, from 24 analysts.  Cisco raised its full-year forecast to $74.8 billion to $75.8 billion and said it now expects $9 billion this fiscal year in AI equipment sales to the biggest cloud companies, more than double last year, its release shows.  Cisco shares had already risen 1.24% to $102.01 in regular trading.  In after-hours trading they were little changed, last at $101.90, down 0.11%, as of 4:17 p.m. Pacific, a CNBC quote showed.

Applied Materials, a Santa Clara maker of chipmaking machines, reported record quarterly revenue of $10.41 billion, up 53%, for the quarter ended Oct. 25, and record non-GAAP earnings of $4.16 a share.  That earnings figure beat Yahoo Finance’s $4.05 average estimate for the quarter.  Yahoo did not list a revenue estimate for the quarter just reported, because its published averages had already moved to the next quarter.  GAAP earnings were $3.40 a share, the company said.  Applied forecast about $11.1 billion of revenue, plus or minus $500 million, and non-GAAP earnings of $4.35 a share, plus or minus 20 cents, for the current quarter.  Yahoo’s averages for that quarter were $10.84 billion of revenue, from 21 analysts, and $4.25 of earnings per share, from 22 analysts.  Applied’s shares fell 3.58% to $380.95 during the regular session, then rose 1.08% to $385.05 in after-hours trading as of 4:17 p.m. Pacific, CNBC showed.  That after-hours bounce was modest compared with the day’s decline.

A Fed rate hike would make new mortgages, car loans and credit card balances costlier.  A report on wholesale prices, the Producer Price Index, is due Friday, Reuters noted.

Source:  CNBC S&P 500 quote, Nasdaq Composite quote, Yahoo Finance S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq (intraday chart data), Nvidia’s SEC filing and news release, Cisco earnings release, Yahoo Finance Cisco estimates, Applied Materials earnings release, Yahoo Finance Applied Materials estimates, CNBC Cisco quote, CNBC Applied Materials quote, Reuters via Devdiscourse and The Associated Press.