S&P 500 and Nasdaq Fall Friday as AI Stocks Slide Again

Wall Street finished the week mixed on Friday, and the split ran right along the AI line. The S&P 500 slipped 0.40 percent to 7,561.67 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.91 percent to 25,136.27 as selling in artificial intelligence stocks picked up again, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.10 percent to 52,347.55. The Russell 2000 eased 0.31 percent to 2,790.49.

The day's strangest winner was a cooling company. Modine, which makes cooling systems for data centers, closed up 27.9 percent at $135.66 after Bloomberg reported that Samsung Electronics is in talks to buy it. Samsung said it couldn't confirm the report and Modine hadn't commented — reported talks, not a signed deal — but the stock had already been up as much as 38 percent before the open.

The biggest loser was a space company that hasn't flown a paying customer in two years. Virgin Galactic fell 31.1 percent to $1.84 after reporting third-quarter results and a plan to sell up to $250 million of new stock. The company retired its last Unity spaceplane in 2024 and now expects its first commercial flight early in the second quarter of 2027. Selling new shares spreads the company across more of them, and the price did what it usually does with that news.

Cisco managed the day's most thankless result: record first-quarter revenue of $18.5 billion, up 24 percent, a raised full-year forecast — and a stock that fell 6.2 percent to $95.64 anyway. Gross margin slipped from a year earlier, and Cisco guided to $18.0 billion to $18.2 billion for the current quarter, below the quarter it just reported. The market read the record as the peak, not the trend.

The chip slide was broad. AMD gave back Thursday's gain and fell 8.8 percent to $534.06, Broadcom lost 4.8 percent, Dell dropped 7.2 percent and CoreWeave fell 6.1 percent. Nvidia lost 2.0 percent to $162.85, its second straight down day. Traders had bought AMD and Broadcom on Thursday on the theory that chip orders would spread around; Friday unwound the theory in a single session.

Earnings still produced winners away from the AI trade. Nu Holdings, the Latin American digital bank, rose 11.8 percent to $13.22 on record third-quarter net income of $1.1 billion and 143 million customers. Cerebras gained 11.2 percent to $108.72 on record revenue of $210.8 million, up 55 percent, a raised 2026 outlook and Microsoft named as a customer. Liftoff Mobile jumped 30.6 percent to $24.44 after reporting revenue of $238 million, up 32 percent, and lifting its 2026 revenue forecast to between $907 million and $912 million.

The morning's economic data didn't rescue the mood. October wholesale prices came in a little cooler than expected, which argues against inflation reaccelerating — but the 10-year Treasury yield still ended near 5.15 percent, and yields at that level keep pressure on the high valuations tech stocks carry. The VIX, a gauge of expected market swings, rose to 19.79.

Friday's slide didn't erase the week. Every major index still finished higher than last Friday's close, with weekly gains above 1.8 percent across the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and the Dow — chip strength earlier in the week carried the market further than Friday gave back. The week's shape, a climb followed by a one-day argument about AI valuations, is becoming a pattern traders recognize.

The gainers' list showed money rotating rather than leaving. Charter Communications rose 4.28 percent, Texas Pacific Land added 4.15 percent and Workday gained 2.71 percent, while the pain concentrated where the AI premium lives — SanDisk fell 6.98 percent and Bloom Energy lost 5.02 percent alongside the chip names. Bitcoin slid about 4 percent to roughly $68,500 in the same risk-off move, with the broader crypto market down nearly 6 percent.

For households, the day's numbers translate narrowly. A mixed close with the Dow positive and the Nasdaq down is a rounding error in a retirement account, but the level underneath it isn't: a 10-year Treasury yield near 5.15 percent keeps mortgage and borrowing costs pinned high regardless of which way stocks lean, and it's the yield — not the index — that Friday's cooler wholesale-price reading failed to move.

Next week brings the test Friday set up. Nvidia reports earnings on Tuesday, its first report since Thursday's leadership change, and big retailers — Home Depot, Walmart, Target and Lowe's — report through the week, giving the consumer side of the market its say. Whether the 10-year yield stays above 5 percent will decide how much room either story has to run.