Overview:
This was the week the AI story lost its most famous face. Jensen Huang, the founder who turned NVIDIA into the engine of the whole AI boom, was pushed out on Thursday after reports tied him to an alleged Chinese intelligence asset. The stock cratered at the open and chip names wobbled from Taipei to New York, yet the wider market barely flinched. Dip buyers stepped in, money rotated into rivals like AMD and Broadcom, and the Nasdaq is actually on track to end the week in the green and back out of correction territory, helped by a powerful relief rally on Monday. However, the real squeeze came from somewhere else. A third consecutive month of hot inflation reports turned a December rate hike from “likely” into a “done deal”, the 10-year Treasury yield pushed back above 5% and the dollar climbed to its strongest level in 19 months. That chain reaction knocked gold back below $4,000 and Bitcoin under $70,000, while oil's Iran premium crept back in by Thursday.
1. NVIDIA CEO Huang’s exit thrashes down tech stocks
The company at the heart of the AI boom lost the man who built it. Reports said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's founder and CEO, had a close personal relationship with an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore chip buyer suspected of funnelling NVIDIA chips into China, and that US officials reportedly believe she works for Chinese intelligence. The board opened an independent probe last weekend, Congress wanted answers and the Justice Department took over the Megaspeed case. On Wednesday night the Wall Street Journal reported the board was ready to act, and by Thursday morning he was gone. CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim CEO while an outside search begins. The stock opened about 13% lower yesterday and was down as much as 14% at its worst point, marking its lowest plunge since June 2025. Then the dip buyers seized the moment, jumping in swiftly and paring losses. At the market close NVIDIA was down just over 4%, and the shares are edging up today in premarket, before Friday's open. Investors now patiently await for the new successor, but also the upcoming earnings results on the 17th of November. It is not a stretch to say that Washington's probes are far from over and in anticipation of new evidence, traders will likely hold a severely cautious stance against the AI chip prodigy before committing aggressively capital back into it.
2. The AI trade finds its floor anyway
While all of the above is being said, there was a twist underneath it all. For all the drama around its biggest name, the AI trade spent the entire week finding its feet on the ground. After the worst stretch for tech since the COVID-19 pandemic, Monday delivered a proper relief rally, with the S&P 500 recording its best day since April, with every sector joining in and Wall Street's fear gauge, the VIX, sinking fast. AI cloud provider CoreWeave added a second leg on Wednesday with blowout results, yet their debt worries simmer beneath it. And when the NVIDIA news broke, the money did not run for the exits, it simply changed lanes. AMD and Broadcom, NVIDIA’s main competitors, both jumped more than 5% on Thursday as traders bet they could win a bigger slice of the AI chip pie, whereas the server-maker Super Micro took a massive beating. The S&P 500 slipped only about 0.3% on that day and is up close to 3% on the week, sitting within 3% of its October record. On the flip side, the Nasdaq Composite trades at around 8% below its own record and has quietly climbed back out of correction territory, at least for the time being. The floor looks solid for now, but it was built on breadth and rotation, nudged by the shortfall of the biggest name.
3. Hot inflation turns the Fed debate about size
Tuesday's US inflation report was the moment the week's mood really shifted. Consumer prices came in hotter than expected for a third month running, with housing costs doing a lot of the damage, and the takeaway was simple enough. Price pressures in services particularly, are sticking around even as energy cools and the Federal Reserve's hawks did not waste any time broadcasting their intentions. Governor Christopher Waller, an infamous hawk, said a bigger, half-point hike should be on the table in December if inflation stays hot. Adding pressure, Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan stated that she wants at least two more hikes, and Cleveland's Beth Hammack argued for rather smaller, but more frequent moves to get the job done. Needless to say, traders listened and received the message loud and clear. As a matter of fact, Fed Funds Futures showcases that money markets fully priced in the 25bps hike scenario for December, treating it as a “done-deal”, and gone as far as to assign a rough, 13% chance for the decision being a larger, 50bps hike. Not only that, but markets are also pricing close to four more 25bps hikes by the middle of 2027. So the question for the 8th and 9th of December is no longer whether the Fed moves, but how big of a step it takes, and whether this week's numbers have validated the views to go ahead and move with the larger one.
4. Yields back above 5%, and the dollar at a 19-month high
The bond market did the heavy lifting from there. The 2-year Treasury yield, the one that reacts fastest to Fed expectations, had one of its biggest single-day jumps in years on CPI day, and the 10-year, the benchmark for mortgages and company borrowing, has pushed back above 5% and sits around 5.13% this morning, its highest in about three weeks. Even the 30-year auction needed a juicy, fat yield to get done, a sign investors want more reward for lending the government in the long run. Consequently, the dollar followed the rate gap higher and is holding at its strongest level in 19 months, the Euro has slipped to its weakest level in about a year and a half, and the Yen heads straight into fresh deterioration territory. And the story around the dollar being above 160 against the Yen matters immensely, because Japan’s Finance Ministry has stepped in to defend its currency around these levels multiple times in the recent past, so intervention chatter is getting louder yet again.
5. Gold gives up $4,000, and Bitcoin loses $70,000
The combo of higher yields and a stronger dollar have been historically proven to be tough on assets that pay no income, and this week the observation was proved twice. Gold, which spent last week comfortably above $4,000, lost its footing after the inflation report, slipped through that, psychologically important, round number, and on Thursday hit its lowest level in about a year before steadying near $3,900 this morning. The $4,000 mark that traders leaned on as support now flipped and looks more like a ceiling, and silver has had an equally rough ride. Bitcoin told the same story with more leverage. It started the week already below what Strategy, the biggest corporate holder, paid on average for its coins, then broke below $70,000 for the first time since August and is hovering around $69,000 this morning. More than $1bn of leveraged bets were wiped out in a single day, and money keeps leaking out of the spot Bitcoin funds. Week in, week out, the speculative corner has been the first to feel tighter money, and unlike the stock market, it has not found a floor of its own just yet.
6. Oil slides below $90, then Trump sidelines Vance and the Iran premium creeps back
Oil was the one force working in the Fed's favour, at least until Thursday. Brent, the global benchmark, fell sharply on Monday after President Trump said further US strikes on Iran were “highly unlikely”, and on Tuesday it briefly dipped below $90 for the first time since August, more than 20% below its late-October peak. Part of that calm came from Vice President JD Vance, who had been working a back channel to Tehran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei to revive direct talks. On a separate development, the US Energy Information Administration added to the calm the same day. Its monthly outlook sees the world pumping more oil than it uses from the end of this year, with stockpiles building fast in the first half of 2027 as Middle East supply comes back, enough to drag Brent below $90 by spring, even if prices hover near $100 for the rest of this year. Then came Thursday which flipped the script on its head. President Trump said the US does not actually need a deal with Iran, then proceeded to point towards the United States’ naval blockade as leverage, and told VP Vance to stick to domestic priorities, effectively pulling him off the file. Crude jumped more than 3% intra day and the energy sector was the only corner of the S&P 500 that managed to finish higher. This morning Brent sits near $96, still heading for a second weekly fall. The catch is simple. If diplomacy stalls and oil keeps climbing while services inflation stays sticky, the Fed loses its one source of relief heading into December. Furthermore, until that surplus shows up, every Iran headline still moves the price, and sticky inflation leaves the Fed little room.
