Nasdaq erases post-election losses as AI trade roars back on Veterans Day
The Nasdaq Composite erased its post-election losses on November 11 as a tech-led rally roared back to life on Veterans Day.
A thin holiday session, a strong CoreWeave report and a chip rally pushed tech stocks back above their post-election lows.
The Nasdaq Composite rose approximately 1.8-2.2% to land near 25,500, while the S&P 500 gained roughly 1.3-1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished flat.
The bond market was closed for Veterans Day, creating thin liquidity that allowed a sharp move higher to squeeze short sellers.
CoreWeave sparks rally
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.
Market split
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 divergence suggests investors are getting choosier, favoring companies that directly sell the hardware and capacity, while treating the biggest spenders with more caution.
What this means for investors
Holiday trading with the bond market shut is not a normal environment. When liquidity thins out, a single positive catalyst can produce outsized moves.
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.
Those concerns did not disappear on Veterans Day. They were simply drowned out by a good earnings report.
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