Thursday, November 12th, 2026
Pre-market futures are back in the red somewhat this morning, with the bond market re-engaged after Wednesday’s bank holiday, and as the tech world grapples with the concept of a Jensen Huang-less NVIDIA NVDA. Shares of the (until recently) world’s largest company by market cap is down another -8.6% this morning. The Dow is presently -249 points, the Nasdaq is -445, the S&P 500 is -66 and the small-cap Russell 2000 is -23 points at this hour.
Bond yields are back up over +5% on both the 10-year and 30-year this morning: +5.056 and +5.395%, while the 2-year yield is +4.818%. These figures have tightened their yield curves, as well — all are well within the “normal” 40 basis-point (bps) gap. The yields jumped within seconds of President Trump issuing a notice that the U.S. does “not need a deal with Iran.”
Initial Jobless Claims Reach 200K
A new report on
Initial Jobless Claims for last week came up to +200K exactly — breaking a long string of sub-200K claims going back to Labor Day. This follows the slightly upwardly revised +191K the previous week. Even at +200K, we are looking at very healthy employment numbers from this angle.
Continuing Claims, reported a week in arrears, came in sub-1.7 million this morning: +1.697 million, from a slight downward revision to +1.717 million the prior week. Again, we’re seeing historically few Americans filing jobless claims, as has been the case for couple months now.
However, strong employment figures — such as the ones we saw during Jobs Week last week — remove a possible hindrance to the Fed raising interest rates to curb inflation. Full employment is the other half of the Fed’s mandate, but these numbers do reflect a scenario very close to full employment.
What to Expect from the Stock Market Today
News headlines are coming across: CEO Jensen Huang is stepping down immediately from his post as Chairman and CEO of NVIDIA. The company’s CFO, Colette Kress, has been named interim CEO, with the company looking for a permanent search for a replacement to Huang, who is the only CEO NVIDIA has ever had. This news will suck much of the air out of today’s market sentiment.
Elsewhere,
Existing Home Sales for October are expected at 10am ET this morning. Estimates are for another downward tick, to 3.8K seasonally adjusted, annualized units from 3.99K reported a month ago. Housing has been rough sledding for nearly four years. The recent low was in August: +3.93K, while the recent high was December at +4.27K. Until interest rates make mortgages more accommodative, expect these woes to continue.
We’ll also hear from Fed members today, including Fed Governor Michael Barr, San Francisco President Mary Daly and New York President John Williams. Analysts will be checking to see if any or all of these members are in-line with Fed Governor Chris Waller and Dallas President Lorie Logan, who sounded open to a 50-bps hike at its December meeting.
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