U.S. Stocks Fall as Inflation Lifts Treasury Yields

The two-year Treasury yield rose 0.180 percentage point to 4.725%, its biggest one-session increase since April 9, 2025. The 10-year yield climbed 0.120 point to 4.982%, and the 30-year yield added 0.093 point to 5.349%. Before the data, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said he would support a half-point rate increase if core inflation was running at 0.3% or more. October’s inflation reading met that threshold. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said the Fed might need to accelerate rate increases.

Oil prices offered some relief, continuing a post-election decline. U.S. crude futures fell 81 cents, or 0.9%, to $86.04 a barrel as traders watched for changes in Iran policy after the midterm elections. The average U.S. gasoline price fell below $4 a gallon, according to AAA. The dollar strengthened against other major currencies, while gold fell $84.30, or 2.1%, to $4,020.70 an ounce.

In technology stocks, Nvidia fell 5.5% to $168.89 as traders weighed possible fallout from an investigation into Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s extramarital affair with Alice Huang, whom U.S. officials believe is a spy working for China. The affair has raised concerns about the chipmaker’s intellectual property, the article said. The PHLX Semiconductor index slipped 0.4%.

Anthropic is targeting a $1.3 trillion valuation for an initial public offering expected next week, below the reported $2 trillion valuation it had sought before concerns about the AI sector emerged. J.D. Joyce, president of Houston-based Joyce Wealth Management, said chipmakers were still “printing money” and that one person’s affair would not stop the AI revolution.

SoftBank Group reported a $7.1 billion quarterly loss, partly from a charge on power-generation equipment for U.S. AI data-center projects; its American depositary shares fell 4.1% to $11.26. On Holding shares dropped 7.5% to $34.70 after growth in direct-to-consumer sales moderated in the third quarter. Vodafone fell 1.2% to $15.50 despite raising growth targets and flagging difficulties at its German unit.