“I don’t wanna play with you anymore.” - Nvidia’s board

Denny’s most valuable ex-employee just picked up a second ex. 

The man, the myth, the legend Jensen Huang “resigned” as CEO (and from the board) on Thursday after 33 years, and Nvidia handed the keys to its Gerri (read: CFO Colette Kress) on an interim basis. She keeps the CFO job, and her first earnings call as boss is Tuesday. Tell me you don’t have a succession plan without telling me… 

ICYMI, Jensen admitted on Sunday to an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, and the board launched an “independent review.” Then the NYT reported that he’d also been getting his Don Draper on with a VP who reported directly to him, and the board decided Wednesday night it had seen enough. On Thursday, Reuters reported a third affair, with another Nvidia employee. What a sh*tshow.

Naturally, Nvidia shares cratered as much as 13% at the open (think: briefly below a $4T market cap) before paring losses to close down more than 4%, dragging the Nasdaq down 0.4% with it. The S&P 500 also fell 0.4%, and the Dow shed about 188 points. Retail bought the dip to the tune of $111M in the first 30 minutes, the most on record per Vanda Research. The more you buy, the more you save (allegedly). 

Bernstein, on the other hand, downgraded the stock and warned of “more allegations to come.” Not great, Bob. Investors, meanwhile, went poly: AMD and Broadcom ripped about 5% each, and Alphabet (a key Nvidia customer that also makes its own chips) climbed nearly 2%.

As for the board, chair Harvey Jones says it has “full confidence in Colette and the leadership team.” Which, it had confidence in Jensen on Sunday, too. #47 isn’t waiting around, though. Per his Truth Social: “there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple.” So far, Tim Apple Nvidia hasn’t said a word.

Which, speaking of the devil, Apple stays winning. Apple has been setting records pretty much since Tim handed the CEO job to John Ternus in September. So yeah, Nvidia can have him. Case in point: Shares touched a fresh all-time high of $359.37 on Thursday, the iPhone maker’s second record this week, before settling around flat. Coincidence? I think not… 

Elsewhere, in stonk land, Donny No Deal Truthed on Thursday that “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed,” three days after he called the war basically over. Stonks didn’t love that either, and oil is back up. WTI rose 2.55% to $88.74 a barrel, and Brent added 3.3% to $95.82.

Love hate to see it. 

Regardless, the sh*tuation-chip in AI just got even more interesting across the board. Although, in Donny’s defense, the worst thing Timothy Cook ever got caught doing was the Apple Sock. So there’s that… 

Until next time, friends! 

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

☕ Market Gossip

> Home Sales in October Plummet to 16-Year Low (Wall Street Journal): Enjoy staying (rent) poor.

> 10-year Treasury yield jumps back above 5% as oil gains and more Fed rate hikes expected (CNBC): Define, Bond villains…. 

> HubSpot Replaces CEO and CFO in ‘Refounding’ of Software Company (Bloomberg): Lost and refound… 

> Cyberattack on Fireworks AI allowed hackers to access Notion customers’ chat transcripts (TechCrunch): Honestly, this might be worse than the Ashley Madison leak for some of you…

“WTF” Meme of the Day

 

Mark my words, this meme will get him elected president… 

 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds position in Alphabet and Google as mentioned in the article.