Stock Market Today: Wall Street Opens Monday After Friday's Rebound — and a Bruising Week
Friday's close steadied the market without repairing the week: the Nasdaq rose 1.09 percent and the S&P 500 added 0.31 percent while the Dow fell 0.46 percent, leaving all three lower for the week — and Monday opens with futures edging higher and Tuesday's inflation report ahead.
Wall Street goes into Monday's open steadier than it ended Thursday, and still nursing the week's losses. Friday finished mixed: the Nasdaq gained 1.09 percent to close at 24,579.42 and the S&P 500 advanced 0.31 percent to 7,376.86, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 237.33 points, or 0.46 percent, to 51,285.73. The rebound followed Thursday's steep losses — the Nasdaq down 5.5 percent, the S&P 500 down 4.4 percent and the Dow off more than 1,800 points in the benchmarks' worst session since April 2025 — and it was led by the same chipmakers that had been hit hardest, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumping 4.2 percent on Friday.
The week behind those numbers is the one investors are carrying into Monday. The sell-off was driven by concerns that Democratic victories in the midterm elections could lead to tighter restrictions on artificial-intelligence infrastructure and data-centre construction, and even after Friday's recovery the week closed lower across the board: the Nasdaq down 3.4 percent, the S&P 500 down 2.7 percent and the Dow down 0.9 percent. Against that, Friday also brought the month's strongest jobs reading: nonfarm payrolls increased by 165,000 in October, well above forecasts of 59,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent — a labor market that, on these numbers, is not cracking under the market's politics.
Monday's early signals point to calm rather than another lurch. Reuters' Morning Bid reported an upbeat start to the week, with Asian shares rebounding and US equity futures edging higher, and oil prices calming after President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he was highly unlikely to order fresh attacks on Iran as long as talks to end the conflict continued to make progress. The week's first real test is already on the calendar: Tuesday's US consumer-price report, which will tell investors whether inflation gives the Federal Reserve room to move — or gives a fragile market another reason to swing. This desk will carry Monday's close from the verified numbers when the bell rings, not before.
