US stocks opened the week with a broad rally that recouped a chunk of last week’s rout, though the session’s most important move was the one that refused to participate. The S&P 500 rose 2 percent and the Nasdaq Composite added 3.4 percent at their intraday peaks, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 844 points, or 1.65 percent. The bounce came after the S&P 500 logged its worst weekly decline since April 2025 and the Nasdaq 100 shed $2.3 trillion in a single session Thursday, driven by fears that a strengthened Democratic majority in Congress would target the AI sector.
Nvidia stands alone
Nvidia shares plunged 9 percent to $170, a seven-month low, after Chief Executive Jensen Huang acknowledged an affair with a woman identified in media reports as a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. The disclosure knocked as much as 1 percent off Nasdaq 100 futures in Asian trading before those contracts reversed. The selloff was idiosyncratic: Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices each gained 5 percent, ON Semiconductor rose 3 percent, and the rest of the Magnificent Seven, Amazon up 5 percent, Tesla and Alphabet up more than 3 percent, Microsoft up 2 percent, all traded higher.
Oil and politics provide the backdrop
Brent crude dropped 4 percent toward $94 a barrel, extending last week’s 16 percent slide after an unconfirmed report that Iran had softened its stance on the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump said Sunday it was “highly unlikely” he would order further strikes on Tehran if talks progress, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio downplayed the odds of a breakthrough. Japanese and Taiwanese equities had entered bear markets last week, and South Korea’s chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell more than 16 percent, but Monday’s oil decline and dip-buying steadied sentiment.
Jobs data keeps a December hike alive
Friday’s payrolls report showed US employers added 165,000 jobs in October, more than double the 65,000 economists expected and well above the 48,000 monthly average of the prior year. Traders now price an almost 80 percent probability of a Federal Reserve rate increase by year-end. This week’s test comes Tuesday with the consumer price index, followed by earnings from AI-exposed names including CoreWeave, Cisco Systems and Applied Materials.