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

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Another rout in chipmakers dragged stocks lower Friday, even as inflation data eased fears of more aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes. 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 Corp.’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% a day so far in November and the Nasdaq 100 an even more bruising 2.4%, 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.

Vanguard’s flagship S&P 500 fund attracted nearly $24 billion in October, while a triple-leveraged semiconductor ETF pulled in $9 billion despite losing half its value. Even as Nvidia’s upheaval rattles the artificial-intelligence trade, demand for Anthropic’s planned blockbuster initial public offering has exceeded the shares available several times over.

The S&P 500, with a 2.5% rally, staged its first weekly advance since early October, even as just a small group of its members is trading at their 52-week highs. The Nasdaq 100 added 3.5% in the five-day stretch.

For some professional investors, the message from the bond market is reason enough to stay cautious. Skyler Weinand, chief investment officer of the $4.5 billion shop Regan Capital in Dallas, says 10-year Treasury yields could stay above 5% for the foreseeable future, and the Federal Reserve will continue to hike interest rates.

“We are staying in higher-quality, defensive names that aren’t taking on additional debt and are producing ample cash flows,” he said. “We are in the same camp of running minimal leverage and staying defensive until we see better downstream gains from AI.”

Among the more aggressive wagers, a group of double-leveraged Nvidia ETFs has attracted roughly $900 million over the past week, even as the chipmaker’s shares lost 13% following the departure of its longtime chief executive officer.

For Joseph Crow, a 35-year-old retail investor from Connecticut, the turmoil offered a chance for a quick payday. On Tuesday, he says he wagered $3,000 on call options expiring in three days on the triple-levered Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (SOXL), betting on a fast rebound in chip stocks. The conviction paid off the next day — Crow says he sold for roughly $23,000.

“It was definitely a lotto purchase,” he said. “Seeing Nvidia so beaten down, it was like, ‘Man, something’s gotta lift eventually.’”

All told, the market’s violent swings have created booms and busts for those trying to ride them, while reinforcing the appeal of a simpler approach: owning the market rather than trying to pick winners and losers.

“Every year, there’s a new single-stock story — Nvidia is the latest,” he said. “Each time, it reminds investors the risk that comes with concentration, and they keep going back to broad beta.”