Nasdaq and S&P 500 Rebound as Chip Stocks Recover From Thursday’s Rout

U.S. stocks rebounded Friday morning after their worst day since last year’s tariff selloff, led by a sharp recovery in chip stocks. About an hour into the session, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.36 percent at 24,644.52, the S&P 500 was up 0.74 percent at 7,408.36 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.06 percent at 51,489.99. The Nasdaq 100 was up 1.57 percent at 27,046.81.

Thursday’s losses were severe. The Nasdaq fell 5.52 percent to 24,315.00, its largest one-day point drop on record, and closed more than 10 percent below its October record, putting it in correction territory. The S&P 500 fell 4.36 percent to 7,353.73 and the Dow lost 1,833 points, or 3.44 percent, to 51,523.06. All three indexes wiped out the gains from Wednesday’s post-election rally in a single session.

Chip stocks led Friday’s recovery. The iShares Semiconductor ETF was up 6 percent in early trading after plunging 12 percent on Thursday. Nvidia rose 7 percent, Advanced Micro Devices rose 13 percent, Micron rose 9 percent and Intel rose 8 percent. SanDisk, which fell 22 percent on Thursday to lead S&P 500 decliners, was up 13 percent, while Western Digital and Seagate each climbed more than 5 percent.

Strong earnings reports added to the rebound. Cloudflare rose 12 percent after reporting results that beat expectations, and Airbnb jumped 10 percent after raising its guidance. Health insurer Humana rose 5 percent and Moderna rose 4 percent after their earnings reports.

The morning’s October jobs report also shaped trading. Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, far above the roughly 65,000 economists expected, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent. The strong report raised the odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike in December to 78 percent from 70 percent, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.89 percent from 4.84 percent at Thursday’s close.

The split in Friday’s market reflects that tension. Strong hiring is good news for the economy, but it also gives the Fed more room to raise rates, which weighs on rate-sensitive stocks. That is part of why the Dow lagged while technology stocks rebounded.

In other markets, West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures held steady at around 90.40 dollars a barrel, gold futures fell 1.6 percent to 4,050 dollars an ounce and bitcoin traded at around 75,700 dollars, little changed from Thursday afternoon.

For the week, all three major indexes remain on track to post losses, with the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 tracking a fourth consecutive weekly decline. The next data points are the consumer price index on Nov. 10, Nvidia earnings on Nov. 17 and the Federal Reserve meeting on Dec. 8 and 9.