Nasdaq Climbs About 1.9% as Stocks Rebound After Thursday’s AI Selloff

U.S. equities rebounded on Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, after Thursday’s artificial-intelligence-linked selloff pushed the Nasdaq Composite into a correction, with the tech-heavy index climbing about 1.9% while investors also assessed a hotter-than-expected October employment report.

Indexes stabilize after Thursday’s plunge

Yahoo Finance’s live markets report said the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 0.1%, the S&P 500 rose about 1%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained about 1.9% after the tech-heavy index slipped into a correction on Thursday. A separate Yahoo Finance quote panel in the same coverage showed the Dow near 51,511.65 around 12:32 p.m. ET, essentially flat on the day as of that stamp after an 11.41-point move of about −0.02% at that moment, underscoring how the blue-chip gauge lagged the Nasdaq’s rebound.

Yahoo Finance said major indexes were still on track to post substantial losses for a volatile election week in which Democrats retook the House and Senate. At the center of Thursday’s deep selloff, which the report said erased about $2.3 trillion in market value, were concerns about a slowdown in data-center construction and AI spending. The Friday rebound therefore reversed part of the prior session’s damage without erasing the week’s broader drawdown.

Correction territory for the Nasdaq typically refers to a decline of at least 10% from a recent high, and Yahoo Finance framed Thursday’s close as having put the index into that category before Friday’s bounce of roughly 1.9%. The S&P 500’s about 1% gain and the Dow’s roughly flat to 0.1% advance painted a leadership picture tilted toward technology and growth names recovering from the prior day’s washout.

Jobs report adds a second catalyst

The Labor Department reported that the U.S. added 165,000 jobs in October, above a revised 60,000 figure the month before and above the 65,000 jobs economists expected, according to Yahoo Finance. That print arrived as stocks were already attempting to stabilize from the AI-driven slide, giving equity traders a separate labor-market data point to digest alongside the rebound in technology shares.

Yahoo Finance said chip stocks including Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Micron and Sandisk recouped some losses from the prior session’s broad selloff. Thursday’s decline had also sent the VIX Volatility Index up about 70% to 28, the report said, underscoring how abruptly risk measures spiked before Friday’s recovery attempt. Recouping part of those semiconductor losses helped underpin the Nasdaq’s roughly 1.9% session gain.

Because the payrolls gain outpaced forecasts, traders also had to weigh whether stronger hiring would keep Federal Reserve rate-hike expectations elevated even as equity indexes bounced. Yahoo Finance’s Friday blog treated the jobs surprise and the AI-trade stabilization as concurrent themes rather than a single narrative, with the 165,000 October gain sitting well above the 65,000 consensus cited in the same coverage.

Energy and week-long context

Yahoo Finance said oil prices remained in play, with Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate futures falling below $100 a barrel as energy traders continued to assess Middle East risks, including the possibility of re-escalation. That commodity backdrop sat alongside the equity rebound rather than driving the Friday stock move, leaving crude as a parallel market story for the session.

The sequence for the week remains stark: a post-election rally earlier in the week gave way to Thursday’s AI and semiconductor wipeout, then a Friday bounce of roughly 1.9% on the Nasdaq and about 1% on the S&P 500 with the Dow roughly flat. Yahoo Finance’s framing put data-center and AI-spending concerns at the heart of Thursday’s $2.3 trillion market-value wipe, while Friday’s session mixed partial recovery in those names with digestion of the 165,000 October payrolls print.

As of the midday update window covered by Yahoo Finance, U.S. stocks had stabilized enough for the Nasdaq to post a solid session gain after correction territory was reached the prior day, even as the broader election-week scorecard still pointed to substantial net losses across the major averages. The contrast with Thursday’s roughly 4.5% Nasdaq slide and semiconductor-led washout left Friday defined by recovery attempts rather than fresh liquidation, contingent on how investors continue to price AI capital-spending risks and the stronger labor data.

Sources: Yahoo Finance live markets report, Nov. 6, 2026; U.S. Labor Department October employment figures as cited by Yahoo Finance.