Nvidia Steadies After 2 Days of Selling — but the Tape Says This Is Not Over

November 13, 2026 — The opening gap meant nothing. The S&P 500 printed 7,616.85 at the bell — roughly 0.2% above Thursday’s close — and then sold off steadily, touching 7,524.26 within the first 40 minutes of trading as Nvidia extended its post-resignation slide and a hot annual wholesale inflation print reminded traders that the Federal Reserve still has company on the other side of the room.

A Tale of Two Opens

All three major indices posted positive readings at the 9:30 AM bell. The S&P 500 opened at 7,616.85, up from a Thursday close of 7,592.40. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 52,491.67, a gain of 194.58 points or 0.37%. The Nasdaq Composite added just 8.02 points on the open, a 0.03% move that looked tentative from the first tick. Within minutes, the buying stalled. By 10:11 AM ET, the S&P 500 had given back all of those gains and more, sitting at 7,525.57 — down 0.88% on the day — with its session low of 7,524.26 representing a full reversal of the pre-market optimism that futures had telegraphed. The Dow tracked lower to 52,152.69, a decline of 0.28%. The Nasdaq Composite fell hardest in percentage terms, reaching 24,994.17 by mid-morning, a move that makes the opening bounce look like a liquidity blip rather than a directional signal.

Data Visual

Friday Opening Bell: Index % Change From Prior Close as of ~10:13 AM ET

Compares early-session performance across major U.S. indices, showing how quickly the gap-up open reversed into red territory.

Values in %

Two forces pulled the market in opposite directions at the open. October PPI came in at +0.3% month-over-month, a tick below the 0.4% forecast — that was the encouraging half of the report. The annual figure was not. PPI surged 6.5% year-over-year, the biggest such reading since November 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is an upstream inflation signal — it tells you what cost pressures are sitting in the pipeline before they reach consumers. Traders who leaned on the monthly beat to justify a risk-on open found themselves outrun by the annual print within the first half-hour.

The Nvidia Overhang Has Not Lifted

Nvidia shares traded in a range of $163.80 to $170.00 with 55.9 million shares changing hands by 9:37 AM ET, extending a sell-off that has now run across two full sessions since Jensen Huang resigned Thursday amid disclosure of two extramarital affairs. Thursday alone saw the stock drop 4.34%, closing at $166.19 — well below its 52-week high of $243.37 — and Friday’s early action added another 2%. The board named finance chief Colette Kress as interim CEO while a permanent search begins, a move that markets read as stabilizing on the governance side but silent on the strategic one.

The volume at $163.80 matters. That is the session low as of the data available, and it sits not far above the 52-week floor of $148.80. For context on the broader damage, our earlier analysis of how one resignation wiped $600 billion off the AI trade captures the scale of what has already been lost. The debate now is whether the structural bull case — Nvidia’s data center dominance, its software moat — can reassert itself without its founder at the helm. Cerebras Systems gave a partial answer Friday: shares surged roughly 16% after a surprise profit and better-than-expected Q3 revenue, with the stock up 12.58% at the 9:33 AM open. The AI spend cycle is not dead. The question is who captures the next dollar of it. For more on that dynamic, see our piece on whether the AI trade can survive without Jensen Huang.

Data Visual

NVDA Two-Session Decline: Closing Price vs. Friday Intraday Low

Shows Nvidia’s price erosion from pre-resignation close through Friday morning, illustrating the two-session drawdown traders are navigating.

Values in $

Modine’s 31% Gap Is the Session’s Cleanest Story

Modine Manufacturing (NYSE: MOD) opened at $142.00 and traded at $138.98 — up $32.88, or 30.99% — by approximately 10:08 AM ET, with 2.9 million shares printed through that point. The premarket story was even louder: MOD reached $146.00 in premarket trading, up 37.61%, on more than 310,000 shares, following reports that Samsung had entered discussions about a potential partnership or acquisition. The stock opened the regular session at $142.00 and hit a first-15-minute high of $144.32 at 9:33 AM ET on volume of 523,070 shares. The day’s range of $135.02 to $146.50 tells you there is real two-way trading here — not just gap-and-go momentum. The 52-week range of $87.84 to $323.25 is a reminder that this stock has seen wilder swings; today’s move, while dramatic, is not unprecedented in the context of its own history.

Palo Alto Networks added another layer to the morning’s sector divergence. Shares rose more than 3.5% after KeyBanc Capital Markets upgraded the stock to overweight from sector weight, with the upgrade note issued when PANW was trading at $322.66. The stock traded as high as $337.42 on the session, suggesting the market received the call with conviction. In a session where tech is broadly under pressure, a cybersecurity name catching a bid on a fundamental upgrade rather than a momentum chase is a data point worth holding.

The Levels That Will Define the Afternoon

Four hours remain in the session and two questions will determine where things close. First: does Nvidia hold $163.80? A close below that level would confirm that professional sellers have not exhausted their supply and would likely pull the Nasdaq lower into the final hour. Second: can the S&P 500 recover the 7,592 prior close? The index opened above it and failed — a second failure to reclaim that level before 2 PM ET would signal distribution, not consolidation. The PPI annual rate of 6.5% has not moved the bond market in a way that is yet visible in the equity tape, but that transmission can be delayed. Watch credit spreads into the close as a secondary indicator. The tech sell-off that began Wednesday has been orderly so far. Orderly sell-offs can become disorderly ones when volume accelerates into the final 30 minutes.

This session opened with the market inclined to look past the Nvidia shock and found it could not. The PPI annual print gave traders a second reason to sell, and the gap between where futures pointed and where the S&P 500 actually traded by mid-morning is a reminder that pre-open optimism is a commodity with a very short shelf life. The index is not broken — 7,524 is still well above the 52-week floor of 6,316.91 — but the tape is under pressure from two directions simultaneously, and neither one is resolved. Watch $163.80 on Nvidia and 7,524 on the S&P. Those two numbers will tell you everything about whether this afternoon is a recovery or a continuation.

Market mood: the PreMarket Sentiment Index stood at 25/100 (Risk-off) at the November 12, 2026 close.

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