Nasdaq, S&P 500 rally as Nvidia, Tesla, Google lead Big Tech surge

Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports:

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Nvidia shares climbed 2% on Monday as President Trump is set to decide whether to allow the company to export its H200 AI chips to China.

The H200s are much more powerful than the H20 chips Nvidia is currently allowed to export to China under US trade rules. The US government effectively banned sales of Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips to the country in 2022 under Biden.

The H20 chips have faced their fair share of turmoil, however. In April, President Trump introduced surprise export controls on Nvidia’s H20 chips, but later reversed them in exchange for 15% of more of the company’s revenue from sales to the country. But the move prompted blowback from China, as the country responded by banning Chinese tech firms from buying H20 chips.

Nvidia’s revenue-sharing agreement with the US government has not yet been formalized, per the chipmaker’s latest quarterly filing to the SEC.

The company’s China business fell flat in the third quarter.

“While we were disappointed in the current state that prevents us from shipping more competitive data center compute products to China, we are committed to continued engagement with the US and China governments, and will continue to advocate for America’s ability to compete around the world,” CFO Colette Kress said during the company’s earnings call on Nov. 19.

Trump previously teased that he would discuss Nvidia’s Blackwell chips during trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, raising hopes about allowances for Nvidia to sell a lower-power version of its latest AI chip designs to the country — but the US president later walked back that commentary.

Michael Burry — the famed “Big Short” investor who accurately predicted the collapse of the US real estate bubble in 2008 — has longed for his days writing commentary about the stock market in 1999 while working as a neurology resident physician at Stanford.

So he shut down his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, earlier this month and launched a Substack on Sunday.

Burry’s Substack, “Cassandra Unchained,” is the latest newsletter — and perhaps the highest profile — to take aim at the AI bubble. Others from tech commentators Gary Marcus and Ed Zitron have existed for a few years.

Burry argues that the AI bubble is just like the dot-com bubble, with “catastrophically overbuilt supply” of internet infrastructure (then) and AI infrastructure (now), but “nowhere near enough demand” for the tech. He described both bubbles as “manic investment booms.”

The price of five-year Oracle (ORCL) credit default swaps on Monday climbed to their highest level since October 2022, per Bloomberg.

The annual cost to insure $10 million of Oracle’s debt against default jumped to 1.19%, or about $119,000 per year, according to Bloomberg, citing data from ICE Data Services.

Oracle’s credit default swaps are financial contracts that act like insurance on the AI cloud firm’s debt. When their price rises, it signals that investors believe there is a higher likelihood that Oracle will default on its debt obligations.

Oracle has issued $25.8 billion in investment-grade debt this year, per Bloomberg data. Investors have become skeptical of the AI bubble as some Big Tech players have begun to use debt to fund their AI projects — in addition to Oracle, there’s Meta, xAI, and most recently, Amazon.

Both Oracle’s 10-year and 30-year bonds issued in September were trading below par on Monday. The former traded at roughly $0.98 on the dollar, while the latter traded at $0.93 on the dollar.

The stock rose fractionally Monday amid a broader rebound in tech stocks.

Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) shares aimed for yet another record high on Monday and were set to close above $300 for the first time.

The stock hit an intraday high of $317.75 in morning trading.

Alphabet had already jumped to two fresh highs over the course of last week, defying the broader downturn in tech stocks amid investor fears over an AI bubble. The advance comes after the release of Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 3, on Nov. 18. Experts have said the model is ahead of those of rivals OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

Wall Street analysts have been bullish on Alphabet following the Gemini 3 launch, with several reiterating Buy ratings on the stock on Monday.

“After a period of pressure from regulatory overhangs, increasing competition in search and advertising, and lack of clarity on its long-term AI positioning, GOOGL shares have begun to recover – and we see more room for multiple expansion as the company demonstrates its AI prowess,” said BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones in a note to investors Monday, reinstating coverage of Alphabet with an Outperform rating and $355 price target.

Also adding fuel to the stock’s run-up, Google also announced a multimillion-dollar Cloud deal with NATO on Monday.

Tech led gains in US stocks on Monday, boosting hopes for a rebound from broad losses in November.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added more than 1%, extending gains from Friday to help recover from declines earlier last week. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) advanced roughly 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) edged up 0.3%.

Novo Nordisk (NVO) stock fell 10% before the bell on Monday after the pharmaceutical company said its Alzheimer’s drug failed to meet its goal in late-stage trials.

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Tesla (TSLA) stock rose 1.8% before the bell on Monday after CEO Elon Musk said on X that the electric-vehicle maker already had designed AI chips for its cars and data centers.

Eli Lilly (LLY) stock fell 2% in premarket trading on Monday. The healthcare company saw its maret capitalization top $1 trillion for the first time ever last week.

WeRide (WRD) stock jumped 7% before the bell on Monday after reporting a rise in its revenue within its latest earnings report. The revenue rise was mainly due to its global fleet expansion.