Jensen Huang quits Nvidia; Kress named interim CEO as shares fall 4.3%
CFO Colette Kress becomes interim CEO five days before earnings announcement. AMD and Broadcom offset most of Nvidia’s drag on QQQ and SPY, while small caps fell 1.7% and the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.10%.
Key takeaways
Jensen Huang resigned Thursday as Nvidia’s chief executive and left its board, ending 33 years at the head of the chipmaker he co-founded. Nvidia shares fell as much as 14% at the open, to $148.80, their lowest since mid-2025. They closed down 4.3% at $166.19, leaving the company worth just over $4 trillion. Bernstein cut its price target to $200 from $400
Nvidia gave no official reason for the departure, but Huang's exit followed reports of two extramarital affairs, one with a former executive at the cloud company Megaspeed whom U.S. intelligence officials concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset. China has disputed that finding.
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation on Nov. 8 and said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised. By Thursday the board was weighing whether to remove Huang, and some lawmakers had already called for his resignation. Three House committee chairs have asked him to attend a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18.
About 734 million Nvidia shares traded today, 3.7 times the 20-session average. Bernstein cut its price target on the stock to $200 from $400.
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim chief executive, while keeping the finance job. Nvidia said it will report fiscal third-quarter results Tuesday, Nov. 17, as scheduled.
Nvidia's woes dragged the major U.S. stock indexes down. The S&P 500 and the Dow each fell 0.36%, while the Nasdaq-100 fell 0.3%
Advanced Micro Devices gained 5.9% and Broadcom climbed 5.5%, but these successes were not enough to fully offset Nvidia's downward pull on the big indexes.
AMD and Broadcom offset Nvidia
AMD's gains came as William Blair, a research firm, upgraded the company to "outperform" from "market perform" before the open.
In the Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ, Nvidia's drop took 0.3 of a percentage point off the fund. But AMD and Broadcom's gains added 0.4 back, more than covering that drag for the QQQ, but not enough to cover for losses elsewhere in QQQ's portfolio. QQQ ended the day down 0.3%.
AMD and Broadcom more than offset Nvidia in QQQ
NVidia accounts for 6.3% of the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF SPY. At that weight, Nvidia's 4.3% decline alone took 0.27 percentage points off SPY returns today. AMD and Broadcom, together representing 3.7% of SPY and 6,5% of QQQ, added back 0.21 percentage points. SPY fell 0.34%.
Equal-weight index drops 0.9% — more than twice SPY's losses
Despite the fact that Nvidia is the largest component in the S&P 500, The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP), which holds each S&P 500 company in the same proportion rather than weighting their holdings by market cap, fell 0.85%, more than twice SPY’s 0.34% loss.
Among the 11 Select Sector SPDR funds, only the energy fund ('ETF.XLE') rose, gaining 1.5% as oil prices climbed. The materials fund (XLB) fell 1.3%, the worst of the group, weighed down by Corteva's 24% drop after an earnings miss and reduced forecast. The technology fund (XLK), in which Nvidia is 13.2% of assets, fell 0.36%, in line with the S&P 500.
Of the 5,651 U.S.-listed ETFs with a closing price, 4,689, or 83%, fell in today's trading.
Energy was the only Select Sector SPDR that rose
Treasury yields spike as bonds sell off
Treasurys sold off as bond trading resumed after Wednesday’s Veterans Day closure. On the Treasury Department’s daily par yield curve, the 10-year yield rose 12 basis points (0.12 percentage point) from Tuesday, to 5.10%. The two-year yield rose 13 basis points, to 4.86%, and the 30-year yield rose 8 basis points, to 5.43%. The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), which falls when long-term yields rise, lost 1.5%
What to watch for
Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results after the close Tuesday, Nov. 17. Kress is expected to lead the call, her first as interim chief executive.
The Labor Department releases its October producer price index, a measure of the prices businesses receive for goods and services, at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday. Economists expect a 0.4% monthly increase after September’s 1.3% jump, the largest since March 2022. It is the last major inflation report before the Federal Reserve meets Dec. 9-10, where traders expect a rate increase.
October retail sales come out at 8:30 a.m. November 17th.
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