By Niket Nishant and Utkarsh Hathi
Nov 13 (Reuters) – Nasdaq 100 futures were muted on Friday in a volatile week that saw the resignation of Jensen Huang as CEO of chip heavyweight Nvidia amid scrutiny over his relationship with a Chinese businesswoman suspected of spying for Beijing.
Shares of Nvidia rose 2.6% in premarket trading after losing about 11% this week through Thursday, when Colette Kress was named interim CEO, heightening concerns surrounding the AI trade, but are still on course for their longest streak of weekly losses since October 2012.
The scandal has risked spilling over into the broader AI industry, since Nvidia is at the heart of the boom. The company’s financing arrangements with several other AI players could now face greater oversight because of the shift in leadership, investors said.
“I’m a bear for AI-related stocks. You’ve got to exit these waves before they crash. And in AI, we’ve got a big wave going on,” said Sean Peche, founder and portfolio manager at Ranmore Fund Management.
Investors are also awaiting October’s producer price inflation reading, which could be crucial in determining how much the US Federal Reserve raises rates next month.
Traders are fully pricing in a hike. Some central bank policymakers in recent days have raised the prospect of a 50-basis-point increase, compared to a widely expected modest 25 bps rise. Odds of a 50 bps hike sit around 12%, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
At 6:33 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis rose 27 points, or 0.05%, S&P 500 E-minis gained 11.75 points, or 0.15%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis lost 7.5 points, or 0.03%.
The weak AI sentiment threatens the recovery of equities after last week’s selloff following Democrats’ midterm sweep.
MICROSOFT OUTAGE HITS SHARES
Microsoft’s Outlook, Teams and Copilot were down on Friday, marking one of the company’s worst outages that stretched beyond 12 hours, disrupting communications for businesses and governments worldwide.
Shares of the company fell 2.1% in premarket trading and were the only loser in the Magnificent Seven group of stocks.
Cerebras jumped more than 17% after the chip and cloud company raised its 2026 revenue forecast and signed Microsoft as a customer.
Strong earnings have at some points kept the negative market mood in check this week. Of the 450 companies in the S&P 500 that reported earnings as of Thursday, 83.6% surpassed expectations, according to Tajinder Dhillon, head of earnings and equity research at LSEG Data and Analytics.
Still, investors are wary of a bunch of risks, including on the geopolitical front. Oil prices were in positive territory for the third consecutive session, a day after President Donald Trump said the US does not need a deal with Iran.
Several chip shares were lower. AMD and Broadcom lost more than 1.5% each.
Crypto stocks fell, with Coinbase, Strategy and MARA Holdings down between 1.4% and 2.6% after bitcoin hit its lowest level in about three months.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Utkarsh Hathi in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Pooja Desai)
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