US Stocks Slip as Nvidia's CEO Exit and a 5% Bond Yield Rattle Wall Street

US stocks fell on Thursday, November 12, as Nvidia's chief executive resigned and the 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 5%. The S&P 500 slipped 0.35% to 7,592.40, the Nasdaq fell 0.39% to 25,366.09 and the Dow dropped 0.36% to 52,297.09, while the Russell 2000 lost 1.66%. Nvidia plunged more than 14% at the open before recovering to close down 4.34% at $166.19, as rivals AMD and Broadcom jumped nearly 6%.

Nahid Joy

Nov 13, 2026 - 09:31

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A busy New York Stock Exchange trading floor seen from above, with circular trading posts lined with monitors showing market data, large blue NYSE signs overhead, American flags, and traders in business attire working at desks across the wooden floor.

US Stocks Slip as Nvidia's CEO Exit and a 5% Bond Yield Rattle Wall Street

US stocks gave back part of Wednesday's rebound on Thursday, November 12, as Wall Street absorbed two shocks at once: the resignation of Nvidia's chief executive and a jump in government bond yields back above 5%. The S&P 500 fell 26.98 points, or 0.35%, to 7,592.40, the Nasdaq Composite sank 100.10 points, or 0.39%, to 25,366.09, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 189.40 points, or 0.36%, to 52,297.09. Small companies took the worst of it, with the Russell 2000 down 1.66% to 2,799.06.

The session had opened with a sharp sell-off and never fully recovered. Stocks made a run at the S&P 500's 50-day moving average during the day, then gave way and finished lower, and the 10-year Treasury yield's climb to 5.10% kept pressure on the market into the close.

Nvidia's wild day

Nvidia was the day's defining stock. Its shares plunged more than 14% in the opening minutes after the company announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately, with chief financial officer Colette Kress named interim chief executive. The stock hit a session low of $148.80, down 14.35%, a level not seen since July 2025, before buyers stepped in. Retail investors bought about $111 million of Nvidia shares in the first half hour of trading, the biggest opening bid on record for the stock, according to data from Vanda Analytics cited by Reuters.

By the close, Nvidia had recovered much of the damage, ending down 4.34% at $166.19. That still left the stock down more than 30% from its October 6 peak, a loss of about $1.8 trillion of market value in five weeks, according to Reuters, and down about 20% in November alone. The money leaving Nvidia did not leave the chip sector: rivals Advanced Micro Devices climbed 5.86% and Broadcom rose 5.54% on the day.

Yields break 5%

The second shock came from the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 5.10%, after the largest two-day rise since April 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trading had resumed after the Veterans Day closure, and a soft 30-year bond auction plus comments from Federal Reserve official Mary Daly about further rate rises pushed yields higher and fed bets that the Fed could raise rates rather than cut them. The CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street's fear gauge, rose 6.92% to 18.70.

Higher yields are bad news for stocks in two ways: they make bonds a more attractive alternative to shares, and they raise borrowing costs for companies. That pressure showed up most in smaller companies, which tend to carry more debt, and in the growth stocks whose valuations depend most on future earnings.

Small caps and the rest of the market

Energy was the day's bright spot, rising for a fourth straight session as the best-performing of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors, helped by oil prices. Brent crude jumped 3.3% to $95.82 a barrel and US crude rose 2.52% to $88.71. Gold went the other way, hitting a one-year low of $3,882.10, down 2.96%.

Among the mega-cap stocks, Meta fell 0.82%, while Google parent Alphabet gained 1.79% and Tesla rose 1.69%. After the close, Cisco was up about 2% and Applied Materials jumped 16% in after-hours trading on their own results.

What to watch next

Attention now turns to Friday's data. The October producer price index is due at 8:30 a.m. ET, with five Federal Reserve speakers also scheduled, and traders will be watching both for any sign of whether the Fed is really moving toward rate rises. Nvidia's own third-quarter earnings report is due on Tuesday, November 17 — a report that will now be delivered by a new interim chief executive, and that will test whether the AI trade's recovery has legs. For now, Thursday's message is that the market can absorb even a shock as large as Nvidia's CEO resigning, but not without a bruising, and not while bond yields are climbing through 5%.

For the story so far, see our earlier report on Wednesday's US stock market rebound, when the Nasdaq gained 1.6%, and our report on Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO.

Note on figures: one early wire report carried slightly different preliminary closes (S&P 500 7,593.39, Nasdaq 25,363.75, Dow 52,296.20). The figures in this article are the final closes reported by the Associated Press. The widely reported Nvidia close of $166.19 was consistent across outlets; no source supported a $166.51 close.