• The Peel
  • Posts
  • The Market Rallies Without Nvidia

The Market Rallies Without Nvidia

AMD surged 13%, Brent crude sank nearly 6%, and October inflation data could shape the Fed's next move.

Author

Anushka Sharma
November 10, 2026

Market Snapshot

Get a Top Job Offer, Guaranteed (or tuition is free) | Apply Here

📉 Banana Bits

Market News

Best Day Since April, No Nvidia Required

Two sessions ago the Nasdaq was in a correction and everyone's portfolio was a funeral. Monday, Wall Street had its best day since April. The S&P 500 jumped 2.35% to 7,549.94. The Dow added 1,104 points (2.15%) to finish at 52,389.75, and the Nasdaq ripped 2.74% to 25,253.14. Small caps did even better, with the Russell 2000 up 3.1%.

Oil started us off, and it lit the match. Brent crude dropped 5.8% to $92.57 a barrel after President Trump told CNN he probably won't order new strikes on Iran as long as talks keep moving. For context, Brent started November above $112. Cheaper crude means cheaper gas, cheaper gas means a calmer inflation outlook, and a calmer inflation outlook is the only thing this market wants for Christmas.

The AI trade also bounced back after last week's steep selloff. Concerns about potential restrictions on data center development had weighed heavily on technology stocks, contributing to the S&P 500's worst week since April 2025. Monday brought a sharp reversal. AMD surged 13.3%, Broadcom gained 8.8%, and Caterpillar, which supplies power equipment for data centers, led the Dow with a 7.2% gain. Morgan Stanley and UBS also argued that concerns about sweeping restrictions had been overdone.

And all of it happened without Nvidia. The stock that's carried this market since 2023 fell 4.27% after its board opened an investigation involving CEO Jensen Huang (details in What’s Rotten). The index gained more than 2% on a day its most important member got hit. A year ago that sentence would've been science fiction.

Bonds however didn't celebrate. The 10-year Treasury yield closed around 4.87%, basically flat, and futures still put about 84% odds on the Fed raising rates in December after Friday's report showed 165,000 jobs added in October, almost triple the forecast. Which brings us to this morning. October CPI drops at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists expect prices rose 0.2% to 0.3% on the month, down from 0.6% in September. One quirk: there won't be a year-over-year number, because last year's government shutdown ate the October 2025 data.

All 11 sectors closed green, and anything with a big fuel bill (airlines, cruise lines) had a great day. Nobody was picky.

Peel Take: Call us cautious, but Monday's rebound doesn't erase last week's selloff. Falling oil prices helped ease inflation concerns, while all 11 S&P 500 sectors finished higher. The interesting part? Nvidia fell 4.2%, yet the broader market still rallied. It's encouraging to see Wall Street finding gains beyond its AI heavyweight, although a couple of strong sessions don't necessarily mean the volatility is behind us.

💼 Career Watch

Evercore limits candidates to two applications per year, with no exceptions for withdrawn submissions. Targeting a summer 2029 internship? Take advantage of the time ahead to prepare before applying.

What's Ripe

Advanced Micro Devices ($AMD) 13.26% 

  • AMD closed at $508.58 after Oppenheimer upgraded the stock to outperform with a $600 price target. Analyst Rick Schafer is modeling 135% data center revenue growth next year.

  • Thursday's 17% wipeout is fully erased, and Monday alone added close to $100 billion in market value. A cameo didn't hurt either: AMD's EPYC processors will run inside Google's new TPU 8tx systems.

  • Peel Take: A 17% plunge on Thursday, followed by a full recovery just two trading sessions later. Welcome to the AI trade. Oppenheimer's $600 target still leaves roughly 18% upside after Monday's rally, but the bigger story is AMD's growth expectations. Data center revenue nearly doubled last quarter, and management expects total sales to grow more than 80% in 2027. The momentum is impressive, but so is the bar AMD now has to clear.

Constellation Energy ($CEG) 10.46% 

  • The nuclear giant closed at $276.09 after posting adjusted earnings of $5.06 a share. Wall Street was looking for roughly $3.90. Revenue climbed 45% to $9.55 billion.

  • Management lifted full-year guidance to $12.50 to $12.80 a share, the second raise this year, and pointed to a 20-year Google contract that pays for upgrades across 11 reactors.

  • Peel Take: This was the first big earnings report out of the AI power trade since the election freakout, and it answered the only question anybody had. Are tech companies still signing decades-long power deals? Yes. Roughly 8,500 megawatts’ worth this year. The clever part is the pitch. Electric bills have become a political issue tied to data centers, so CEO Joe Dominguez stressed that the new capacity comes with “no costs being borne by existing customers.” Of everything with “AI” stapled to its pitch deck, we like the reactors best. They don’t check exit polls.

What's Rotten

Nvidia ($NVDA) 4.27%

  • Nvidia closed at $178.67, wiping out about $192 billion in value, after its board opened an independent investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.

  • Huang acknowledged an extramarital relationship in a weekend memo to staff and said he'll cooperate. The board says it has no reason to believe company secrets or national security were compromised. Shares were down about 8% at the lows.

  • Peel Take: We’re skipping the tabloid part. The investing part is plenty. The New York Times and Financial Times report that U.S. intelligence believes the woman involved was passing information to Beijing, which China’s foreign ministry calls a smear. Either way, it lands on the exact nerve where Nvidia was already sore: chips and China. This is also one of the biggest companies on Earth, and it has had one CEO, ever. Dan Ives called Huang irreplaceable on Monday. That’s a compliment, but it’s also key-person risk, and investors will be weighing it while the review plays out.

First Solar ($FSLR) 4.74%

  • First Solar dropped roughly 5%, the worst showing in the S&P 500, after Piper Sandler cut its price target to $222 from $251. Piper kept its overweight rating.

  • The stock had run about 15% over the past week on post-election hopes. Meanwhile, third-quarter sales fell 22.8% and management trimmed its 2026 outlook.

  • Peel Take: Last week's rally was driven partly by hopes of a more favorable policy environment for solar. Changes to energy incentives, regulations, and permitting could support future demand, although their timing and impact remain uncertain. Meanwhile, First Solar's quarterly revenue fell 23%, even as earnings rose 25%. The company still has a sizable order backlog, but investors are weighing longer-term policy opportunities against weaker near-term sales and delayed customer orders.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from J.P. Morgan

👉 Want 1-on-1 recruiting help from J.P. Morgan bankers & 5,000+ top mentors? Apply to WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

📊The Daily Poll

What's the biggest threat to stocks heading into year-end?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Previous Poll:

October CPI drops tomorrow. What do you expect?

Inflation comes in hotter than expected: 57.14% // Inflation comes in cooler than expected: 19.05% // Inflation comes in line with expectations: 23.81%

Student Success Corner

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

A company's founders own 100% of a business valued at $200 million before a financing round. An investor purchases $50 million in newly issued shares and another $30 million in existing shares directly from the founders, both at the same per-share price. What percentage of the company will the founders own after the transaction?

Answer: 68% ownership.

Today

You have two identical eggs and a 100-floor building. There is a certain floor above which an egg will break when dropped, and below which it will survive. What is the minimum number of drops needed to guarantee finding the highest safe floor in the worst case?

❝

Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

James Clear

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?


Happy Investing,
Elie, Mitchell, Fernanda, Nick, & Patrick