Wall Street scrambles back from early loss

An early swoon shook the stock market on Friday, as Nvidia, bitcoin, gold and other high fliers swung on an increasingly antsy Wall Street, but it quickly calmed.

- By Stan CHOE

After starting the day with a sharp drop of 1.3%, the S&P 500 erased all of it and then meandered up and down before finishing with a slight dip of 01%. The Nasdaq composite flipped to a gain of 0.1%, while the Dow Jones industrial average trimmed its loss to 309 points, or 0.7%, after earlier being down nearly 600.

AI stocks were again at the center of the action, a day after dragging Wall Street to one of its worst drops since its springtime selloff. Nvidia, which has become the poster child of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, began the day with a loss of 3.4%. It then stormed back to a rise of 18% and yanked the market in its wake.

Critics have been warning the U.S. stock market could be primed for a drop because of how high prices have shot since April, leaving them looking too expensive. They pointed in particular to stocks swept up in the AI mania. Nvidia’s stock has more than doubled in four of the last five years, for example, and the chip company is still up more than 40% for this year so far.