US tech stocks pulled out of their recent nosedive on Friday but still left Wall Street looking a touch shabbier and a trillion or so dollars lighter over the week.
The broad market benchmark, the S&P 500, gained as well, but the blue-chip Dow closed lower.
- S&P 500: +0.3%
- Dow: -0.5%
- Nasdaq: +1.1%
Over the week US stocks shed 2.7% while the Japanese market was down more than 9%.
However, not every market suffered — Chinese shares rose 1.7% across the week, Europe gained 0.6% and the ASX came out 1.3% higher after a volatile week.
This week looks to be starting on a mildly positive note as well.
ASX 200 futures, when they closed on Saturday morning (AEDT), pointed to a marginal gain of around 0.2%.
In the US most of the buying action was in AI-related stocks.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 4.2% after slumping in its biggest one-day drop since April 2025.
Nvidia rose nearly 3%, after its worst day since January 2025, when the emergence of low-cost Chinese AI model DeepSeek hammered markets.
Other heavyweight chipmakers, including AMD, Intel and Micron Technology closed up between 5% and 11%, while Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX were also up 4% and nearly 9% respectively after losses earlier this week.
“Most of the disruption of the AI buildout will not probably occur but it’s just the uncertainty of the change in government from Republican-led to Democratic-led, not only at the federal level but the state, local levels,” Sparrow Capital Management portfolio manager Gerry Sparrow told Reuters.
“That’s causing some disruption in the expectations of investors … The volatility around elections or any political event, whether it be war or terrorist attack, is always going to disrupt the market.”
The sentiment was helped by good economic news with stronger than expected jobs data.
Non-farm payrolls grew 165,000 in October, beating the consensus forecast of 70,000, and the unemployment rate came in at 4.1%, compared to prior of 4.2%.
Wages growth also ticked higher.
Those numbers kept a rate hike from the Fed in December very much in play and drove the US dollar higher.
The Aussie dollar shed more ground against the greenback.
It finished the week down 2.3% to reach its lowest level since March, unable to withstand the combination of strong US data, risk aversion on global markets and a softer domestic growth outlook.
Gold slipped a tad (-0.1%) thanks to the higher rates and US dollar but gained more than 5% for the week to close above $US4,000/ounce again.
The slide in oil prices halted on Friday, with Brent crude futures edging higher (just 3 US cents/barrel).
Over the week, Brent fell 17%, its steepest weekly percentage fall since the start of the COVID pandemic and its biggest in absolute terms.
Copper fell to its lowest level since July as traders mulled over the implications of a slower rollout of data centres in the US and across the globe.
Source: www.abc.net.au
