Wall Street’s wild Nvidia ride delivers big paydays and even bigger bruises

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Investors are doubling down on speculative wagers that have delivered both spectacular gains and crushing losses this year.

From Treasuries to turbocharged tech bets, almost nothing on Wall Street is escaping the whiplash. Investors keep pouring billions into the fray anyway.

Another rout in chipmakers dragged stocks lower on Friday (US time), even as inflation data eased fears of more aggressive Federal Reserve rate increases. It was the latest twist in weeks of violent reversals, with oil prices surging before dipping, bond yields lurching and the sudden downfall of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang shaking one of the bull market’s biggest bets.

Beneath the relative resilience of major stock benchmarks, the difference between a windfall and a painful loss has often come down to market timing. The S&P 500 has moved an average of 1.6 per cent a day so far in November and the Nasdaq 100 an even more bruising 2.4 per cent, the largest average daily moves for both since the tariff turmoil of April 2025.

Bonds have offered little refuge. The two-year Treasury yield had climbed nearly 28 basis points this month before Friday’s retreat, following similarly large moves in opposite directions over the previous two months. A popular long-term Treasury ETF has endured its own reversals, while volatility in an iShares fund tracking the classic 60/40 stock-and-bond portfolio has jumped. Professional trend-followers have been wrong-footed, suffering their biggest drawdown of the year.

Driving the tumult: inflation fears keep upending bets on the Fed, tensions with Iran won’t stop jolting oil prices, and confidence in the AI boom remains shaky.

For Chris Davis, chairman of Davis Advisors, the unsettling part is how readily investors seem to be shrugging it all off. “The uncertainty is enormous, the fragility, the things that can go wrong very suddenly, enormous – combined with a tremendous amount of complacency in the market,” he said.

Investors are embracing two distinct playbooks: buying the whole market through tried-and-tested index funds, or doubling down on the kind of speculative wagers that have delivered both…

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