THE SHORT VERSION

THE BOUNCE HELD — NASDAQ UP 1.1%, BUT THE WEEK STILL LOST 3.4%

Satirical cartoon: a giant soap bubble marked AI bursts over a Shanghai trading floor as a stunned investor in red clutches his stock certificate; a Unitree robot sits sliced in half on a counter with a UNITREE −50% sign while the red STAR50 chart plunges off a cliff. — Machine Age Cartoon · Zimbo

Wall Street's AI stocks bounced back on Friday and stopped the worldwide rout: the Nasdaq closed up 1.1%, the S&P 500 rose 0.3%, and only the Dow slipped, down 0.5%, after a jobs report that beat every forecast — employers added 165,000 workers in October.

Nvidia led the recovery, climbing roughly 3% after Thursday's 9.3% plunge, with Micron up 5.6% and CoreWeave up 5.8%; Lam Research jumped 8.5% after announcing a $25 billion buyback. The bounce still only clawed back a fraction of the damage: the Nasdaq lost 3.4% on the week and the S&P 500 fell 2.7%, its worst week since April 2025.

The selling was driven by the midterm results — Democrats swept statehouses and investors fear a slowdown in data-center construction, especially in Texas — plus worries about borrowing costs and whether the AI build-out will ever pay for itself. The S&P 500 still sits only 5.3% below its all-time high.