Markets
Nasdaq Rose 1.6% and Erased Its Post-Election Losses
The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.6% to 25,466.19 on November 11, 2026, erasing its losses since the US midterm elections as CoreWeave jumped 24.7%.
A week after the midterm results knocked the AI trade off its feet, the Nasdaq is back where it started. The Composite rose 1.60% on Wednesday to close at 25,466.19, which CNBC said officially erased its losses since the election. The S&P 500 gained 1.31% to 7,619.38 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 254.60 points, or 0.49%, to 52,486.49. The Russell 2000 of smaller companies added about 0.9%. On Tuesday, after the hotter-than-expected October CPI report, the S&P 500 had slipped 0.38%.
The lift came from the same corner of the market that led the sell-off. CoreWeave rose 24.71% after its third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion beat its own forecast and it raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion. Nebius, a smaller rival, climbed 15.44%. Memory-chip makers had one of their best days of the autumn, with Sandisk, Micron and SK Hynix each up more than 10% at some point in the session, according to Yahoo Finance, Nvidia rose 2.87% after two days of losses, and Apple added 2.04% to a record close of $355.63.
It happened without the usual signal from bonds. The Treasury cash market was closed for Veterans Day, so the rally ran on rate expectations set the day before, when futures moved to price a December Fed hike almost fully: CME FedWatch put the odds of a quarter-point increase at about 90%. Borrowing costs are already biting elsewhere. The Mortgage Bankers Association said the average 30-year fixed rate rose 12 basis points to 7.30% last week, ending four weeks of declines.
The gains did not last into the evening. After the Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia's board was preparing to remove chief executive Jensen Huang, Nvidia fell 8.61% after hours and the QQQ fund that tracks the Nasdaq 100 was down 0.92%. CoreWeave gave back 6.37%. Asian chipmakers held up better on Thursday morning: around 0230 GMT the Kospi was up 1.2% at 5,463.98 and the Nikkei 225 0.8% at 61,714.16, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.1%.
So the recovery is real but thin. It rests on a handful of AI infrastructure names whose moves are measured in double digits, and the biggest of them now carries a leadership question as well as a demand one. Thursday brings weekly jobless claims and October existing home sales, Cisco reports after the close and producer prices follow on Friday. Each will be read for one thing: whether the Fed's December move is a quarter point, or more.