Jensen Huang Resigned From Nvidia And Its Finance Chief Took Over

Nvidia's board accepted the resignation of co-founder Jensen Huang on Thursday and handed the chief executive's job, for now, to the executive who has been running the company's finances. The shares fell about 4% in the regular session and the rest of the U.S. market slipped with them. Underneath that, Treasury yields climbed again at every maturity as Federal Reserve officials said plainly that inflation is still too high.

Fast Facts

• Filings for unemployment benefits rose to 200,000 in the week through November 7, above the revised 191,000 of the week before and the 195,000 economists expected (Read More)
• Rising revenue and profit in its latest quarter led Cisco to raise its outlook, and the shares rallied afterward (Read More)
• More than $74 billion is what SpaceX plans to spend on two data centers, roughly $24 billion in Texas's Rio Grande Valley and about $50 billion in Cochise County, Arizona (Read More)
• United Airlines said it will not let customers use AI agents to book flights or manage reservations, citing cybersecurity risks (Read More)
• An outage knocked out Microsoft Outlook and several other Microsoft apps for many users, who could not reach their email (Read More)
• Eight rate-setting meetings sit on the Federal Reserve's revised tentative calendar for 2027, published Thursday (Read More)

Global News

• Japan's finance minister, Satsuki Katayama, called recent moves in the yen "one-sided and rapid", language that put traders on alert for official intervention (Read More)
• European shares retreated from record highs after Nvidia's chief executive stepped down (Read More)
• China approved Eli Lilly's orforglipron, the country's first oral GLP-1 weight-loss treatment, beating rival Novo Nordisk to the market there (Read More)
• Indian government bonds came under selling pressure ahead of a large auction, with the Reserve Bank of India expected to raise rates again in early December (Read More)

Nvidia's Board Accepted Jensen Huang's Resignation, Effective Immediately

Nvidia's board "accepted the resignation of Jen-Hsun Huang, as NVIDIA's President, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board", effective immediately. That is the wording of Nvidia's own Form 8-K, the filing a public company sends regulators when something important happens between quarterly reports. Colette M. Kress, the executive vice president who has been Nvidia's chief financial officer, was named interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent one, and she keeps the finance job as well. Harvey C. Jones, a director since 1993, was named chair of the board. Neither the filing nor the announcement attached to it gives a reason. Our briefings earlier this week covered the board's review and the reports that it was weighing a change at the top; what is new is that the company has now filed the outcome itself.

Nvidia's shares fell about 4% in Thursday's regular session, the official trading day between the opening and closing bells, by the Wall Street Journal's count. That followed declines earlier in the week that our previous briefings recorded, and the rest of the U.S. market slipped on Thursday too.

So why does one person leaving one job change what a company is worth, and what the companies around it are worth? Because a share price is not a receipt for profits already earned. It is a claim on profits that have not arrived yet, which makes it a running tally of how confident buyers are that those profits will show up, and who will be steering toward them. Change the confidence and you change what someone will pay today. Thursday's briefing called that concentration in one person a risk inside a news report; the filing turns it into a settled fact, which is a different thing to price. Nvidia's next decisions also sit with its chief financial officer, whose job is the company's money rather than its product roadmap.

Much of this is unresolved. No permanent chief executive has been named, the filing states no reason, and one day of trading is one day. Three things would change the picture: who the board names permanently, what that person says about the commitments Nvidia has already made, and what the company reports in its next quarterly results.

Sources: Nvidia's SEC filing · WSJ · Axios · Rapunzl on the board's review of its chief executive · Rapunzl on the board reportedly weighing a change at the top

Yields Rose At Every Maturity As Fed Officials Said Their Inflation Work Is Not Done

The 10-year Treasury yield closed Thursday, November 12, at 5.10%, up 12 basis points (one basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point) from Tuesday, November 10, which is the last published reading before it because Wednesday was Veterans Day. The rise showed up at every maturity: the 2-year at 4.86%, the 5-year at 4.95% and the 30-year at 5.43%, higher by 13, 14 and 8 basis points. New York Fed President John Williams said inflation remains too high and there is still work to do to get monetary policy to the right place, the Wall Street Journal reported, and the Journal described the selling in Treasurys accelerating as officials spoke. European government bonds followed. The new part, per Axios, is the doubt officials are voicing out loud: whether raising rates gradually is enough for inflation that is no longer confined to a handful of categories.

A Treasury yield is the interest rate the U.S. government pays to borrow for a set period. Because the government is treated as the safest borrower there is, nearly every other loan is priced off that rate with something added on top, and those rates move on where people think the Fed is going rather than where it is now. The federal funds rate, the overnight rate the Fed sets for banks lending to each other, sits in a target range of 3.75% to 4.00% after an increase in September and a hold in October. When traders come to believe that range is heading higher, a bond already issued at the old, lower rate is less appealing to hold, so they sell it. That is what a selloff in bonds means, and it runs backwards from how most people read it the first time: the price falls, the payment written on the bond does not change, so the yield for the next buyer goes up. The stock market feels it by arithmetic rather than mood, because a company whose profits arrive eight or ten years from now is valued by converting those future dollars into today's, at a rate built on what the government pays to borrow.

The maturity households feel is the 30-year Treasury bond, the government's long-term debt, which closed Thursday at 5.43%. Mortgage rates follow that maturity over weeks rather than sessions, so Thursday's close is one input and not an answer: today's research carries no mortgage figure. Car loans, credit cards and student loans are priced off the same expectations. On Friday the Journal reported that upward pressure was still there but the selling had slowed from Thursday's pace, with the 2-year steadying. Two sessions separated by a federal holiday is not a trend.

Sources: WSJ on the Treasury selloff · WSJ on John Williams · Axios · U.S. Treasury · Rapunzl on October's inflation report

Existing-Home Sales Fell In October To A Sixteen-Year Low

Sales of existing homes in the United States, meaning previously owned houses rather than new construction, fell 5.5% in October from September and were down 8.8% from October a year earlier. Those are two different measures, not the same drop stated twice: one compares October with the month before it, the other with the same month last year. Either way, the selling pace landed at its lowest level since August 2010, more than sixteen years ago. The figures come from the National Association of Realtors, the trade group for real-estate agents, which is worth noting because it is not a government statistical agency. Investing.com put the October pace at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million units, meaning what one month's sales work out to across a full year. NPR described the figure as landing like a punch in the gut.

Here is why a housing number belongs in a markets briefing. Most buyers do not pay cash, so a house has two prices that both have to work: what the home costs, and what it costs to borrow the money for it. The second moves with long-term government borrowing costs, and the 30-year Treasury bond that mortgage rates track closed Thursday, November 12, at 5.43%. A lender choosing between lending to the federal government and lending to a homebuyer wants to be paid more for the riskier of the two, so when government yields climb, mortgage rates tend to climb with them. A higher rate raises the monthly payment on the very same house, so the same income buys less house. It also works on the other side of the deal, and this is the part most explanations skip: an owner already paying an older, cheaper mortgage has a reason to stay put rather than list, which is how sales can fall without prices falling. This is one month of one series, revisions happen, and today's research carries no mortgage-rate figure to set against it.

Sources: Investing.com · NPR · WSJ · U.S. Treasury

What To Watch

Today:

• Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve's vice chair for supervision, is expected to join a discussion on supervision and regulation at 10:50 a.m. ET, and Vice Chair Philip Jefferson is scheduled to speak on productivity at 7:00 p.m. ET. Either could say something about the December meeting.

Next week:

• Chairman Kevin Warsh is expected to open a Federal Reserve conference on jobs and productivity on Monday, November 16, and Governor Christopher Waller is scheduled to speak on payments on Tuesday, November 17.
• Governor Michael Barr is due to discuss artificial intelligence on Thursday, November 19, and Governor Lisa Cook on the U.S. economy in global context on Friday, November 20.
• Nvidia is expected to report quarterly results on Tuesday, November 17, its first since the leadership change.

Later this month and next:

• The Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to release gross domestic product, personal income and outlays, and corporate profits on Wednesday, November 25.
• The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to meet December 8 and 9.

Nvidia's board has not said when it expects to name a permanent chief executive. This week's earnings calendar could not be retrieved, so no other company reporting dates are listed today.

The Classroom Takeaway

Thursday put three different kinds of news in front of investors: one company's leadership, one central bank's intentions, and one monthly housing report. Each of them moved a price, and each of them is something a class can follow as it happens on our live market data page.