Wall Street Braces for Tuesday’s CPI After AI Rout, Hot Jobs Report and Fed Hike Bets

Wall Street opens the new week bruised, nervous, and staring at a single date: Tuesday, November 10, when the October consumer price report lands at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. It is the last inflation reading before the Federal Reserve decides on interest rates on December 8–9, and it arrives after a week in which the artificial intelligence trade cracked, the jobs market ran hot, and traders sharply raised their bets on a rate hike.

The numbers from last week tell the story of a market that changed its mind in days. The S&P 500 fell 2.7% for the week, its worst week since June. The Nasdaq Composite fell 3.4%, its fourth straight weekly decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.9%. Thursday was the detonation: the S&P 500 fell 4.36%, the Nasdaq Composite collapsed 5.52%, the Dow plunged 1,833 points, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index cratered 12.25% in a single session. Friday brought a partial bounce, not a recovery. The question for this week is whether Tuesday’s inflation data steadies the market — or breaks it again.

Thursday: the day the AI trade cracked

Thursday, November 5, was the worst day for American stocks since April 2025. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,833.06 points, or 3.44%, to close at 51,523.06. The S&P 500 fell 4.36% to 7,353.73. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% to 24,315, closing more than 10% below its October 6 record high — the usual definition of a market correction. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks the chipmakers at the heart of the AI boom, fell 12.25% in one session, its worst day since March 2020.

The sell-off had more than one cause: politics and profits collided. Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections on Tuesday, and Reuters tied part of Thursday’s selling to fears that a Democratic-led Congress could bring tougher regulation of artificial intelligence and slow the build-out of AI data centres. At the same time, investors asked whether the enormous spending on chips and data centres will ever earn enough to justify it. A weak outlook from Qualcomm poured fuel on the fire, according to the Associated Press, and the AI sell-off had already wiped about $2.5 trillion from the Nasdaq in the early-November rout.

Friday: a bounce, not a recovery

Friday brought limited relief. The S&P 500 rose 0.31% to 7,376.86 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.09% to 24,579.42, with the semiconductor index recovering 4.21%. But the Dow fell 0.46% to 51,285.73, and the weekly totals remained ugly: the S&P 500 down 2.7%, the Nasdaq down 3.4%, the Dow down 0.9%.

Readers should be careful with one number that has caused confusion in the coverage. Some reports put the Nasdaq’s weekly fall at 4.91%. That figure is for the Nasdaq 100, a different index made up of the 100 largest non-financial companies on the exchange. The Nasdaq Composite, the broader index, fell 3.4% for the week. Both numbers are correct; they measure different things. The Nasdaq 100’s steeper fall is itself informative: it shows the damage was concentrated in the biggest technology names, not spread evenly across the market.

The bounce also left the market technically fragile. The Nasdaq Composite sits about 11% below its October record high, and the Nasdaq 100 ended the week 3.6% beneath its 200-day moving average. Gold finished the week at around $4,075.80 an ounce, up 4.7%, while the VIX closed at 25.64, down from 28.18 on Thursday but well above the previous Friday’s 19.42. Traders were calmer than on Thursday. They were not calm.

The jobs report that changed the Fed’s maths

Friday’s partial rebound came with a sting in its tail: the October jobs report. The Labor Department reported that employers added 165,000 jobs in October, far above the roughly 65,000 economists had expected in a Reuters poll. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%, and average hourly earnings rose 0.4% for the month. The jobs report beat every forecast, and the market’s reaction was immediate: traders raised their bets that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.

Here the sources disagree, and the disagreement is worth stating plainly. Reuters reported that fed funds futures implied about a 77–80% chance of a December hike after the jobs data. CNBC put the odds near 70% on its FedWatch measure. An earlier caawnews report, published before the jobs data, cited odds of 92%. These are not contradictory in the way they first appear: they come from different measures, taken at different times, and the odds move with every data release. What is settled is the direction: a strong jobs report made a December hike much more likely than it had looked a week earlier.

The logic is straightforward: a jobs market adding 165,000 positions a month, with wages rising 0.4%, does not look like an economy that needs cheaper money. If inflation is also running hot, the Fed has every reason to raise rates — or at least, that is what traders now believe. Tuesday’s CPI report is the next piece of that puzzle, and the last one before the December meeting.

Tuesday’s CPI: what to watch, and one genuine uncertainty

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the October consumer price index on Tuesday, November 10, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. September’s report showed headline prices up 0.6% on the month and 3.7% from a year earlier, with core prices — which exclude food and energy — up 0.3% on the month and 2.6% from a year earlier. Those September numbers were already above forecasts, and they set the bar for October.

There is, however, a real dispute about what Tuesday’s report can even show. One widely cited consensus, reported by CNBC, expects October headline inflation of 3.9% year over year, up from 3.7% in September, with core inflation cooling somewhat on a monthly basis. But another analysis argues the Bureau of Labor Statistics collected no prices in October 2025 during the government shutdown, and therefore cannot publish an official 12-month change for October 2026 at all. On that reading, any year-over-year number quoted for October is a model estimate, not an official print, and the last official annual rates remain September’s 3.7% headline and 2.6% core.

This is not a small technicality. It means readers should treat any “3.9%” headline on Tuesday with care, and check whether it is labelled as an official Bureau of Labor Statistics figure or as an estimate. The monthly numbers — headline expected at about 0.3% and core at about 0.2%, according to the consensus cited in the week-ahead coverage — are the figures the market will actually trade on, because they are the ones the statisticians can measure directly. A monthly reading above those expectations would harden the case for a December hike. A reading below them would soften it. Either way, the reaction is likely to be sharp: the market is positioned for a shock, with short-dated volatility pricing at elevated levels.

Earnings: the AI trade goes on trial

Inflation is not the only test this week. The earnings calendar puts the AI trade itself in the dock. CoreWeave, the “neocloud” company that rents out AI computing power, reports on Tuesday — its earnings call is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Eastern, hours after the CPI release. Cisco and Applied Materials also report during the week, and their outlooks will be read as evidence about whether demand for AI infrastructure is holding up or rolling over.

The stakes are high because last week’s sell-off priced in a policy risk: that regulation and politics will slow the data-centre build-out. Earnings test that fear against hard numbers. Strong demand and confident outlooks would make the fear look overdone; hedged guidance would make it look justified — and the chip trade could fall again just as fast.

Further ahead, the main event is already circled: Nvidia reports earnings on Tuesday, November 17, with its chief executive under a board investigation and three House committee chairmen waiting to hear from him the following morning. That is next week’s story, not this week’s. But traders are already thinking about it, and it is one reason this week’s bounce has been treated with suspicion.

Oil, gold, and the rest of the world

The damage last week was not confined to technology. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 12.76% for the week to $90.83 a barrel, its biggest weekly drop since 2022, according to Bloomberg data cited in the week-ahead coverage — reflecting both the broader risk-off mood and pressure on energy markets from the US-Iran standoff.

Asia felt the rout too. Taiwan’s stock market plunged nearly 3,800 points on November 6, the largest single-day drop on record, marking five consecutive losing sessions — and Taiwan’s regulator moved to limit short selling as its stabilisation fund prepared to intervene.

Two calendar quirks are worth noting. Wednesday, November 11, is Veterans Day: American bond markets will be closed for the SIFMA holiday, while equity markets remain open, which can make for thinner and choppier sessions. And US-Russia-Ukraine talks are scheduled to open in Abu Dhabi on November 10–11, adding a geopolitical thread to a week already full of them.

What this week will decide

Strip away the noise, and this week asks three questions. First, is inflation still rising? Tuesday’s CPI answers that, subject to the measurement caveat above. Second, is the AI build-out still real? The earnings of CoreWeave, Cisco and Applied Materials will give the first evidence. Third, does the Federal Reserve still have room to wait? The jobs report says probably not; the CPI report will say whether that judgement holds.

None of those questions has a safe answer for investors. A hot CPI reading would confirm the December hike traders now mostly expect, and would likely hit the growth stocks that led the market down last week. A cool reading would revive hopes of a pause, but would also raise the question of why inflation is cooling while jobs are booming. And earnings that disappoint would confirm the market’s darkest fear: that the AI boom was priced for a future arriving more slowly than expected.

The honest summary is this: the market fell hard, bounced a little, and is now waiting for data. The data arrives on Tuesday morning. Until then, everything else — the forecasts, the odds, the commentary — is just positioning. Tuesday is when the positioning meets reality.

Frequently asked questions

When is the October CPI report released?

Tuesday, November 10, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. It is the last inflation reading before the Federal Reserve’s December 8–9 meeting, which is why markets are watching it so closely.

How much did stocks fall last week?

For the week ending November 6: the S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.4%, and the Dow fell 0.9%. On Thursday alone the S&P 500 fell 4.36% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52%. The narrower Nasdaq 100 fell 4.91% for the week.

Why did the jobs report push up rate-hike bets?

Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, far above the roughly 65,000 economists expected, while unemployment fell to 4.1% and wages rose 0.4%. A strong labour market makes the Fed more likely to raise rates to keep inflation in check. Traders put the chance of a December hike at roughly 70–80%, depending on the measure used.

Is the 3.9% October inflation forecast official?

Not necessarily. The 3.9% year-over-year figure is a consensus estimate cited by CNBC, but one analysis notes the Bureau of Labor Statistics collected no prices in October 2025 during the shutdown and may not be able to publish an official 12-month change. The monthly figures, expected at about 0.3% headline and 0.2% core, are the numbers to watch.

Which companies report earnings this week?

CoreWeave reports on Tuesday, November 10, with its call at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Cisco and Applied Materials also report during the week. Nvidia reports next week, on Tuesday, November 17.