Technology stocks bounced back on Friday from their worst drubbing in more than a year, but the Nasdaq still posted a fourth straight weekly decline. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.09 percent to 24,579.42, recovering part of Thursday’s losses, while investors sifted for clues about what comes next in the artificial intelligence trade.
Thursday’s selloff set the tone for the week. The Nasdaq fell 5.52 percent, its steepest one-day drop in 19 months, and the S&P 500 fell 4.36 percent, its worst day since April 2025. The Nasdaq closed more than 10 percent below its October 6 record high, the line that marks a correction, and the session erased nearly $3 trillion in market value from S&P 500 companies, according to Reuters.
The week started badly and ended worse before Friday’s bounce. The Nasdaq-100 slipped into correction territory on Monday as doubt over artificial intelligence spending weighed on investors ahead of the midterm elections and earnings from Apple and Palantir. Thursday then set a record for the largest single-day point loss in the history of the Nasdaq Composite.
Friday’s rebound was broad inside technology but narrow elsewhere. The S&P 500 rose 0.31 percent to 7,376.86, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.46 percent to 51,285.73. For the week, the S&P 500 fell 2.7 percent, the Nasdaq lost 3.4 percent, and the Dow slipped 0.9 percent. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 4.6 percent on Friday after plunging more than 12 percent on Thursday, and Nvidia gained 5.6 percent.
Chip shares led the recovery. Advanced Micro Devices rose 11 percent at the close, and gains spread across semiconductor names that had been hit hardest on Thursday. The rebound still left the week’s damage intact: the index has now fallen four weeks in a row, and it sits well below the record it set on October 6.
Nasdaq rebound led by chip stocks
The selling followed the Democratic sweep in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Investors worried that a Democratic Congress would tighten rules on artificial intelligence and slow the data-center buildout, a fear that hit chip makers, memory suppliers and the cloud firms that buy their products. The Dow had risen 1,569 points on Wednesday after the results, before the market turned sharply on Thursday.
A stronger than expected jobs report complicated the picture on Friday. Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, against a consensus near 65,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent. September payrolls were revised up to 60,000 from 29,000 and August to 186,000. Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, told Reuters the numbers would normally push the Federal Reserve to be more on the hawkish side.
Nasdaq weekly decline stretches to four
Rate expectations moved higher after the jobs data. Futures markets put the chance of a Federal Reserve increase in December at about 78 percent, up from about 70 percent before the release, and the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.86 percent. The Federal Reserve meets on December 8 and 9, and Tuesday’s October consumer price index is the last major inflation reading before that meeting.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said the Democratic election wins would not stop the data-center buildout, and that message helped steady chip shares on Friday. Even so, the week’s trading showed how fast sentiment can turn when a crowded trade meets a political shock. The index heads into next week with its four-week losing run intact and its correction still in force.
What comes next for tech shares
Earnings will give the market its next read on demand. Reports are due next week from CoreWeave, Applied Materials and Cisco Systems, three companies tied to spending on artificial intelligence hardware and networks. Their results, plus Tuesday’s inflation report, will show whether the week’s selling was a pause in the AI trade or the start of a longer reset. Investors will also watch whether dip buyers return after four weeks of declines.