S&P 500, Dow recovers, silver soars, tech rebounds: Weekly Market Wrap

From last week’s sell-offs to this week’s tech rebound, the market ended November on a bullish note, and a dramatic surge in silver, which closed the week over 14% higher.

Major indices recover November losses

• The S&P 500 rose 3.7% this week, led by notable gains in Intel, Broadcom, and Robinhood, among others. The monthly gain, though, remained modest at 0.4%.
• The Nasdaq Composite, which rose 4.9% this week, saw a 0.9% decline over the month, covering up significant losses.
• The Dow Jones rose 3.2% this week and ended the month with a 0.4% gain, Nvidia's losses not impacting its overall margin.
• The small-cap Russell 2000 recorded a 5.5% gain this week and rose 1.4% this month, also edging closer to its 52-week high at closing on Nov. 28.

Except for the Nasdaq, all other major indices were able to recoup their losses from the early November tech selloffs and fears that the AI bubble was nearing saturation. 

The CBOE Volatility Index VIX declined 30% this week, realigned with the renewed trust in tech and AI, partly also credited to the high in retail stocks amid holiday shopping.

After last week’s on and off, Gold closed 4.3% higher this week, while silver gained over 14%, closing at $57.16 per ounce, taking over Gold’s gain and recording a new high.

OPEC locks in supply until 2027

Oil, while it gained 0.8% this week, saw a 3% decline over the month and closed at $58.55 per barrel on Friday, Nov. 28.

With the ongoing fluctuations in oil prices, Sunday, Nov. 30 marked the most critical event for the global oil market: the 40th OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting. 

More Nvidia:

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A central framework was to solidify oil’s long-term market stability, considering the ongoing geopolitical tensions that are depreciating its value over time. 

The OPEC+ committee decided:

• It reaffirmed or locked in the current, agreed-upon crude oil production levels for the entire OPEC+ group until December 31, 2026. This step prevents a future surge in supply that would immediately impact oil prices. 
• Another major step was to develop a new mechanism to assess the maximum sustainable production capacity (MSC), which would serve as a reference in the 2027 production baselines. This is important, as many countries in the past have claimed to have more capacity than their baseline allows.
• The next meeting will be on June 7, 2026, and the JMMC (Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee) will continue to monitor global oil market conditions.

Oil prices were up 1.6% in the after-hours on Nov. 30.

The AI rivalry: Alphabet and Nvidia

Alphabet, chastised for its initial lag in the race for AI domination, with few swift launches, completely turned the narrative.

On Nov. 18, Google launched Gemini 3, its “most intelligent model,” and was immediately noticed and appreciated by the likes of Elon Musk (CEO, Tesla), Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI), and Mark Benioff (CEO, Salesforce).

Launching closer to the holidays, it boasted of deciphering and translating handwritten recipes and turning them into a shareable cookbook. Gemini aims to surpass its 650 million monthly active users, compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has 700 million weekly active users.

Additionally, Google announced a multi-million dollar deal with the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) to “deliver highly secure, sovereign cloud capabilities.” Vodacom Group, a pan-African telecommunications and technology company, also collaborated with Google Cloud to accelerate its digital transformation.

This, along with the news reported by The Information that Alphabet is selling its specialized AI chips to Meta, led to pushing its stock closer to $4 trillion this week. With a 6.8% rise in stock price this week, Alphabet is gearing to emerge as a winner, even eliciting a response on X (formerly Twitter) from Nvidia.

Related: Analyst revisits Nvidia stock after Google-Meta news

“We’re delighted by Google’s success – they’ve made great advances in AI and we continue to supply to Google,” Nvidia's news staff wrote, adding that “Nvidia is a generation ahead of the industry,” and that its GPUs (General Processing Units) offer “greater performance, versatility, and fungibility” than ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit), chips built for specific functions and higher efficiency. 

Alphabet, on the other hand, is known for its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are its custom-designed ASICs.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s stock declined by 1% this week and 12.7% over the month, amid concerns that the AI boom is comparable to a short-lived bubble. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is not concerned, however.

Ives sees Nvidia as the “foundation for the AI revolution,” and Jensen Huang as the godfather who has the “best perch and vantage point to discuss overall enterprise AI demand and appetite for Nvidia’s AI chips."

Related: JPMorgan issues urgent call on December rate cuts

While Wedbush did not dismiss the rising demand for Google’s and partner Broadcom’s TPUs, he believes that the AI revolution today “starts and ends with Nvidia,” and this will remain so in the near future.

Ives added that the trillions of dollars in expenditure on AI will benefit several key players in the race. Still, they should not forget that Nvidia is the indisputable “Rocky Balboa champion of the AI revolution,” TheFly noted.

What to look forward to in December

Before we delve further into the month, Monday, Dec. 1, will be significant, as it marks the start of the five-day AWS conference, re:Invent, in Las Vegas, where Amazon will announce its latest innovations.

The upcoming month will be crucial, as the Federal Reserve will announce its final decision on the rate cut, the probability of which has increased considerably in the last week. Before the meeting, the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers will be released, which are essential for the Fed’s final decision.

The data from Thanksgiving, Black Friday deals, and Cyber Monday shopping will be analyzed earlier next month to examine consumers’ appetite for expenditure and gauge the strength of the economy.

And who can forget the Santa Claus rally, a period of seven days that includes the last five trading days of December and the first two trading days of January? Historically, this period has seen a significant increase in stock prices, typically marked by optimism, perhaps buoyed by the holiday spirit, as the name suggests.

Whether that will be true this year remains to be seen, as this year has been anything but traditional when it comes to the stock markets.

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