Published November 13, 2026
We have experienced significant volatility in the stock market as of late.
A little more than a week ago, stocks saw their biggest one-day decline since the start of COVID and the volatility has not entirely settled down.
Thursday of this past week the NASDAQ 100 (QQQ)opened down more than -1.5% on the news that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (NVDA), resigned in the wake of 2-3 affairs, one of which was with a Chinese spy that enabled $7.5B in chip sales into China in violation of US export restrictions on sensitive technologies. Then miraculously only 2 hours into trading the NASDAQ 100 had risen +1.5% from its morning low. Seems bullish, right? Well maybe not. There have been 12 prior instances when this happened within 5 trading days of at least a -4% day — ALL occurred within or entering bear markets:
- 5 between May 2000-May 2002
- 2 between Oct 2008-Jan 2009
- 1 in Oct 2018
- 4 during COVID
Last week’s huge one day decline, while rare, is behavior most typically found at market bottoms or tops. The following is a graph of the four prior instances when the NASDAQ 100 had seven consecutive days of +/- 1.5% ranges and one of those days was a -6% or larger decline and stocks were not already in a bear market. One was the COVID drop and the two others were the dot com top.
While stock market volatility doesn’t foretell the future it does alert us to heightened uncertainty about the future and suffice to say, investors do not like uncertainty and uncertainty generally gets discounted in prices.
Market Update
On Monday, stocks posted a broadbased rally recovering some of the losses from the prior week’s carnage. Technology and especially semiconductor and AI stocks posted substantial gains. Of note, Nvidia shares slumped on the news that CEO Jensen Huang had been involved in a multiyear affair with a Chinese spy that allegedly resulted in over $7.5B in cutting edge chips making their way to China despite US export bans. The S&P500 jumped +2.6% and the NASDAQ 100 popped +3.1%.
On Tuesday, inflation data came in hot, likely solidifying a Fed rate hike in December. The 10Y UST leapt 2.8% higher back to 5% and stocks slumped in response. Oil traded down to the $85 range, the lowest since late August.
Wednesday, bond markets were closed and therefore equities traded without the immediate fear of rate hikes which most Wall Street firms say are inevitable with economists now projecting 3 rate increases over the next 6 months. Strong earnings from Coreweave (CRWV) pushed tech stocks higher with semiconductors (SMH) leading the rally with a +4.8% gain.
Thursday brought news of Jensen Huang’s resignation at CEO of Nvidia with the CFO now operating at interim CEO. It also came to light that the Trump administration and primarily the Commerce Department knew of the illegal chip sales into China by Nvidia and had been turning a blind eye – members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are eager to investigate. Bargain hunter investors jumped into AMD (+3.2%) and Broadcom (AVGO +2.4%) stocks pushing them higher.
Friday rates continued to climb with the 10Y UST yield settling at 5.15%. Oil regained some strength closing at $89. The fallout from the Nvidia debacle continued to cast a pall over stocks with semiconductors (SMH) falling -3%. Of note, consumer staples (XLP) climbed 1.4% and communications stocks (XLC) rose 1% – where Meta and Google account for 42% of that sector.
The week’s big news was the Nvidia mess and the continued aftermath as Nvidia also serves as a primary lender and/or investor in perhaps up to 50% of the AI universe and also that the Federal Reserve has now missed their inflation target for nearly 6 years and may have made a serious policy mistake by not raising rates more aggressively in the past. Will these two issues be the one-two punch that takes the market down a notch? We’ll likely know soon.
Despite these concerns, the indexes closed with decent weekly gains of S&P500 (SPY) +2.5%, NASDAQ 100 (SPY) +3.5% and Russell 2000 (IWM) +1.3%, however these gains only brought the indexes back to where they were 2 weeks ago.
Warm wishes and until next week.