Martin Gamble on US markets: Nvidia loses CEO, Microsoft’s outage chaos

US market experienced a strong rebound after last week’s selloff with chip stocks leading the rebound, reflected in the Philadelphia Semiconductor rallying 18%, although the index remains down by around a third its June peak.

US consumer prices for October came in hotter than expected rising 0.4% with economists estimating year-on-year inflation of 4% compared with 3.7% in September. No official yearly number was published due to the government shutdown in October 2025.

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices was the biggest gainer in the S&P 500, jumping 45% as investors reasoned that Nvidia’s leadership woes could present opportunities for competitors.

At the other end of the performance spectrum, shares of Corteva, which makes crop protection solutions such as herbicides and fungicides, tumbled 24% after warning of continued weakness in the Brazilian market.

Farmers in Brazil, one of the world's largest crop protection markets, have been hit by liquidity constraints as soaring interest rates lift financing costs and input prices rise.

Nvidia hit by CEO exit after scandal

The departure of Jensen Huang following revelations first about an affair with a potential Chinese spy and then with a subordinate wiped out hundreds of billions off Nvidia's market value this week.

While there are questions about the future direction of the business, particularly given how pivotal Huang has been to its success and a structure which is largely centred around him, the shares recovered from the lows hit on the day of his departure as investors bought the dip.

The lack of a clearly articulated succession plan clearly didn't help matters in terms of the market reaction, while the company may have a cloud hanging over it for some time to come as national security issues linked to the crisis are investigated.

Nonetheless, Nvidia is now well established in the AI infrastructure ecosystem, with long-term contracts and leading technology. There is now likely to be even greater scrutiny of next week's earnings to see if the business was at least performing well before Huang's acrimonious exit.

Coreweave rallies as results reassure

Cloud infrastructure specialist Coreweave helped offer some reassurance over its own prospects and those of the broader AI trade when it reported its third quarter earnings on 10 November.

Revenue was up 168% year-on-year and ahead of analyst expectations of $3.55 billion at $3.66 billion while losses were narrower than had been anticipated. Coreweave posted a record order book and raised its full-year revenue guidance to $13-$13.3 billion up from $12.86-$12.9 billion.

The outlook for capital expenditure was also hiked. With concerns about the company's indebtedness brewing, management made clear they did not plan to issue new unsecured debt at group level in 2027.

Having been under severe pressure in the lead up to the results, the shares enjoyed a strong relief rally. Though this was interrupted somewhat by events at Nvidia, with which the company enjoys a close relationship.

Microsoft outage causes chaos

The software giant is scrambling to restore its enterprise services including Outlook and Copilot after suffering an outage of more than 12 hours, with the disruption impacting users across 74 countries.

Microsoft said features of Microsoft 365 services that depended on Exchange Online and email were affected, while elements that did not rely on Exchange Online remained functional.

Exchange Online is the company's cloud-based messaging platform that delivers email, calendar, contacts, and tasks. The company says it does not believe the outage is due to a cyber-attack but is related to an update which had done awry.

The disruption has affected businesses and governments across the world with Bloomberg reporting that traders are resorting to using phones to get trades completed.

Swiss luxury products company Richemont was forced to temporarily postpone its first-half results, before subsequently publishing the figures.

It is the second outage in 2026 following disruption to 365 services in January and an outage in October 2025.