Wall Street is waiting on a boardroom. Nvidia’s directors met on Wednesday night to decide whether Jensen Huang keeps his job, and by lunchtime in London there was still no word. The market has filled the silence the only way it knows how: Nvidia is down around 6% to 7% before the open, Nasdaq futures are back in the red and the bond market, reopening after Veterans Day, has pushed the 10-year Treasury yield back above 5%. US stocks open at 14:30 UK time.
The situation right now
Nasdaq 100 futures are down about 0.8% near 28,250 and S&P 500 futures are off around 0.4% near 7,610. Dow futures are roughly flat near 52,600. That gap is the whole story in miniature. Money is leaving the AI names and parking in the old economy, rather than leaving the market altogether.
It undoes some of Wednesday’s work. Chips led a strong session yesterday, with the S&P 500 up 1.31% at 7,619.38 and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.60%, after CoreWeave’s results eased fears about how the AI build-out is being financed. The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, is back up around 18.
What has changed since this morning
Three things. First, the analysts have moved. Bernstein cut Nvidia to market-perform and halved its price target to $200, Baird downgraded to neutral, and Morgan Stanley’s decision to drop the stock from its top picks is now feeding through. Several analysts have told CNBC the shares could fall another 20% if Huang goes.
Second, the US bond market is open again. Yesterday’s rally happened with Treasuries shut for the holiday, so nobody could check it against Tuesday’s hot inflation report. Today they can, and the answer is not comforting: yields are higher across the curve.
Third, Europe kept its nerve. The Stoxx 600 is sitting near a record around 665 and the DAX is up about 0.7%, helped by Siemens raising its targets, while the FTSE 100 is up a more modest 0.3% after UK growth came in at 0.7% for the third quarter.
Nvidia’s empty throne
The problem for investors is not the scandal itself, it is what comes after it. Huang admitted on Sunday to an affair with an executive at cloud company Megaspeed, and the New York Times reported on Wednesday a second relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reports to him. The board is also looking at the first relationship because of US intelligence concerns, and Democratic senators have asked the administration to preserve records on Nvidia’s chip exports to China.
Nvidia has no obvious successor. Chief financial officer Colette Kress and CUDA architect Ian Buck are among the names mentioned for an interim role. For a company that sits at the centre of the AI trade, with financing ties to many of its own customers, that uncertainty matters well beyond one share price. Nvidia has already fallen more than 20% in a month, and its results on 17 November now look like a test of the company rather than just the numbers.
Stocks moving before the open
The interesting move is who is gaining. AMD is up around 4% to 7% and Broadcom about 3% to 4%, as investors bet Nvidia’s rivals could win business if its leadership wobbles. Intel, Marvell, Micron, Arm and Qualcomm are lower, so this is not a clean sector sell-off. CoreWeave is giving back around 6% to 7% after jumping more than 20% yesterday, and Nebius reports later.
Away from chips, Michael Saylor’s Strategy is down about 4% after MSCI said it will remove the stock from its global indexes, and Bitcoin is down about 2.4% near $72,800, which does not help. Applied Materials and Cisco report after the close tonight, and both will be watched for what they say about AI spending.
The dollar and currencies
The dollar is close to its strongest level since April last year, with the dollar index near 103. Traders now treat a December rate rise from the Federal Reserve as a certainty, with around a 10% chance of a larger half-point move, according to CME FedWatch. That has pushed the euro down to about $1.109, an 18-month low, and kept the dollar near 159.7 yen, uncomfortably close to the 160 area where Japan has warned it is watching closely. Sterling is a touch weaker near $1.327.
Bonds are back, and not happy
The 10-year Treasury yield is around 5.01% and the two-year about 4.77%, both higher as the market catches up with Tuesday’s inflation data. Above 5% on the 10-year is where borrowing costs start to weigh on expensive growth stocks, which is exactly what the Nasdaq does not need on a day like this. A $25 billion 30-year bond auction at 18:00 UK time will show how much demand there is for long-dated US debt at these yields. UK 10-year gilts are around 5.23%.
Oil, gold and metals
Gold is down about 1.3% near $3,950 and silver nearly 2% lower. A strong dollar and higher yields are a tough mix for metals that pay no interest. Brent crude is around $92.30, down about 0.5%, as traders wait for US inventory figures at 17:00 UK time, delayed a day by the holiday. Copper is down about 1.2%.
What is left on the calendar
US weekly jobless claims are due at 13:30 UK time, with forecasts around 195,000; a low number would back the case for a Fed rise. Existing home sales follow at 15:00. There is a busy run of Fed speakers, including Cleveland’s Beth Hammack at 14:00, Michael Barr at 15:00, Austan Goolsbee at 16:30, Mary Daly at 18:10 and New York’s John Williams late tonight. Producer prices land on Friday. Above all of it sits the Nvidia board, which could announce a decision at any moment.
Levels worth watching
On the S&P 500, yesterday’s close near 7,619 and the round 7,600 are the first markers. For the Nasdaq 100, futures around 28,000 matter. In bonds, 5% on the 10-year yield is the line everyone is watching. In currencies, 160 yen per dollar and $1.10 on the euro are the obvious round numbers, and for gold, $3,900. These are references for context, not targets.
How we see it
The bias going into the open is cautious, with a clear split between technology and everything else. The evidence for caution is stacking up: no word from Nvidia’s board, a run of analyst downgrades, a firmer dollar and a 10-year yield back above 5% now that bond traders have had their say on inflation. The evidence for steadiness is that Europe is at records, the Dow is holding up and rivals such as AMD and Broadcom are finding buyers, which suggests investors are reshuffling AI exposure rather than abandoning it.
The opportunity lies in that reshuffle, if the board delivers clarity, whatever the outcome. The risk is a messy announcement, or no announcement at all, which leaves Nvidia drifting into its 17 November results with a question mark over who is running it. A clean decision with a credible interim leader, or yields slipping back below 5%, would challenge the cautious view. The markets to watch are Nvidia, AMD, Nasdaq futures, the 10-year Treasury yield and the dollar against the yen.
For beginners, the takeaway is that uncertainty is often worse for a share price than bad news, because investors cannot price what they do not know. If you want to see how you would approach a day like this, the Samuel & Co Trading assessment is a good place to start.
