Nvidia stock down 6.1% after early 14% plunge; Brent crude tops $94
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang resigned, the company’s board said Thursday morning, and the board named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO. Nvidia’s stock plunged as much as 14% at the start of trading following the resignation before quickly halving its early loss; it was most recently down 6.1%, according to the Associated Press.
The broader U.S. market appeared to be absorbing the swings. The S&P 500 fell nearly 1% at the start of trading before paring its drop to 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 50 points, or 0.1%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was down 0.6% after trimming an early loss of 1.6%.
The stock had been sinking since Nvidia’s board announced an investigation into Huang for a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese government agent. By Wednesday, Nvidia’s price had dropped 27% from its record on worries about whether Huang would remain and how the company would navigate a future without him.
It is, as the Associated Press put it, “a stunning fall for Huang and for Nvidia” — a company that had become Wall Street’s most valuable and influential stock because of its central role in the artificial-intelligence boom. Nvidia’s stock price set a record last month after soaring 1,722% in four years. That compares with a gain of nearly 109% for the overall S&P 500 over the same span.
How Nvidia navigates a future without Huang remains to be determined, and the question looms over the entire market because Nvidia and the broader AI industry have been the main reasons the U.S. stock market has set so many records in recent years, AP reported. Nvidia, for its part, “is still selling AI chips at a quick rate regardless of who stands on a stage and talks them up.”
Elsewhere across the AI industry, stocks swung in the uncertainty. CoreWeave, which buys Nvidia chips and rents out access to them to customers over the cloud, fell 9%. Micron Technology, which sells computer memory that has been in heavy demand from the AI boom, sank 4.9%. Broadcom rose 5.3%, and Advanced Micro Devices added 1.8% on hopes for a competitive advantage; the rival chipmakers were among the strongest forces limiting the S&P 500’s losses. GE Vernova, which is helping to power AI data centers, flipped from a loss of 3% to a gain of 1%.
Oil prices were also swinging after President Donald Trump said he is no longer interested in a deal with Iran to end their war. Trump said he instead asked his vice president to focus on investigating U.S. cities and states run by Democrats. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump said on his social-media platform. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
The price of a barrel of Brent crude jumped from about $92 to more than $94 following Trump’s posting, before easing back. It was most recently at $93.79, up 1.1%. Oil has veered sharply since the United States and Israel began the war with Iran in late February, bouncing between roughly $70 and $150.
Higher oil prices push up worries about inflation, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 5.07% from 4.98% late Tuesday, according to AP. Trading in the bond market had been closed Wednesday for Veterans Day.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a weaker finish in Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.3%, one of the world’s biggest moves.