The tumult surrounding Jensen Huang's ouster from Nvidia continues to cloud the outlook for the artificial-intelligence trade.
Nvidia shares flip-flopped, reversing earlier gains to turn red, as investors brace for further fallout from the crisis, including in Washington.
Two huge tests are coming up for the AI trade next week. Nvidia is due to report earnings on Tuesday, when Finance Chief and Interim Chief Executive Colette Kress will face questions about the web of financing deals that Huang struck. And the blockbuster initial public offering for Anthropic, one of the biggest users of Nvidia's chips, is expected on Thursday.
U.S. stocks are mostly in the red. Tech-heavy Asian indexes closed lower after rebounding early in the session and European equities are mixed.
Meanwhile, shares in Microsoft are slipping as it works to resolve a widespread outage that is affecting its Teams and Outlook services.
Oil prices are ticking up, with few notable developments in the Mideast conflict. The oil market is expected to return to a surplus in the final quarter of this year for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran war, the International Energy Agency reported Friday.
A selloff in bond markets has abated after Treasury yields rose sharply Thursday on solidifying expectations of further interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. Longer-dated yields are still ticking up.