The Nasdaq Composite has clawed its way back. A tech-led rally on November 11 wiped out the index's post-election losses, and it happened on a day when much of Wall Street was barely paying attention.
The bond market was closed for Veterans Day. With thin liquidity, the result was a sharp move higher that squeezed short sellers.
The Nasdaq Composite rose approximately 1.8-2.2% to land near 25,500. The S&P 500 gained roughly 1.3-1.5%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished flat.
The spark came from CoreWeave, the neocloud provider that rents out AI computing capacity. Its shares jumped 20-26% after the company posted strong quarterly results. It also issued 2026 revenue guidance of $13-13.3 billion.
That signal rippled straight into chip stocks. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose approximately 7-8% on the session. Micron, Broadcom and Intel all posted substantial gains, and Nvidia shares recovered several percent after a stretch of heavy losses.
Not everyone in tech joined the party. The hyperscalers, the cloud giants like Microsoft and Alphabet, lagged the rally. The Magnificent Seven group as a whole underperformed.
That split is worth noticing. Hyperscalers are the ones writing the enormous checks for AI infrastructure. Chipmakers and neoclouds are the ones cashing them. On November 11, the market clearly preferred the side receiving the money over the side spending it.
The rebound looks more dramatic once you remember the hole it climbed out of. On November 5, the Nasdaq fell 5.52% to 24,315. That was its steepest one-day drop since April 2025.
The selloff confirmed a correction, leaving the index more than 10% below its record set on October 6.
The trigger was political as much as financial. Democratic election victories around November 3-4 initially sparked an equity rally on November 4. The mood flipped the following day as worries mounted about permitting for AI data centers and broader regulatory pressure on the sector.
Holiday trading with the bond market shut is not a normal environment. When liquidity thins out, a single positive catalyst can produce outsized moves. Traders who were positioned short got caught, and their buying to cover added fuel.
The divergence between semiconductors and hyperscalers suggests investors are getting choosier, favoring companies that directly sell the hardware and capacity, while treating the biggest spenders with more caution.
CoreWeave's guidance is central to that thinking. Its $13-13.3 billion revenue outlook for 2026 is a forecast, not a result. If it holds up, it supports the argument that demand for AI computing remains strong.
The November 5 rout showed that regulatory risk, particularly around data-center permitting, can hit tech valuations fast. Those concerns did not disappear on Veterans Day. They were simply drowned out by a good earnings report.
