Corporate America: November 9, 2026 — Chips Roar Back as Nvidia Falls Alone

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Corporate America spent Monday taking back last week’s rout, almost in unison. The S&P 500 rose 173.08 points, or 2.35%, to 7,549.94, its biggest daily gain since April 8, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1,104.02 points, or 2.15%, to 52,389.75, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 673.71 points, or 2.74%, to 25,253.14, according to the Associated Press close. All 11 S&P 500 sectors rose, Reuters reported, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 6.9%. The fuel was cheaper oil: Brent crude fell 5.8% to $92.57 a barrel, down from above $112 at the start of the month, after President Donald Trump told CNN that new strikes on Iran were highly unlikely if negotiations made progress, the AP reported.

The exception defined the day, and it is tracked throughout on our Corporate America desk. Advanced Micro Devices closed up 13.26% at $508.58, Rocket Lab rose 10.91% to $58.86 ahead of its after-hours results, Constellation Energy rose 10.46% to $276.09, NRG Energy rose 10.32% to $97.40 and Broadcom rose 8.78% to $319.48, while Nvidia fell 4.27% to $178.67 and was, Reuters reported, the only decliner in the chip index. It was the pattern our Earnings Season Playbook describes in reverse: when the whole sector is repriced upward, the company carrying a question no model can answer gets left behind.

Earnings: Power Pays, Capital Returns

Constellation Energy delivered the morning’s biggest beat. Adjusted operating earnings rose to $5.06 a share from $3.04 a year earlier, well ahead of the roughly $3.89 analysts expected, GAAP net income reached $5.19 a share and revenue rose to $9.55 billion, helped by favorable market conditions and the Calpine business acquired in January, the company said. Constellation raised the midpoint of its full-year adjusted guidance for the second time this year, narrowing the range to $12.50 to $12.80 a share, and agreed to buy the 609-megawatt Rhode Island State Energy Center from Shell Energy North America for $715 million.

NRG Energy paired a beat with the day’s largest transaction. Adjusted earnings reached $4.68 a share against about $3.03 expected, revenue rose to $9.47 billion and GAAP net income more than tripled to $561 million, or $2.59 a share, on higher East capacity prices and stronger Texas margins, Zacks reported. NRG reaffirmed its 2026 guidance and initiated 2027 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $5.5 billion to $6.0 billion, not yet reflecting the sale announced alongside the print. Berkshire Hathaway, reporting Saturday in Greg Abel’s third quarter as chief executive, posted operating earnings down 5.8% to $12.705 billion as insurance underwriting profit fell 43%, Reuters reported — but it more than doubled its buybacks to $9.6 billion and ended September with $356.9 billion of cash and equivalents.

Deals, Capital and a Boardroom Investigation

NRG’s transaction reverses part of its own recent history. The company agreed to sell six natural gas-fired plants totaling 4.9 gigawatts, across New York, New England and Texas, back to LS Power for $4 billion in cash, less than a year after buying a much larger portfolio from the same seller, Reuters reported. The sale, at 8.0 times the assets’ estimated 2027 adjusted EBITDA, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2027 subject to regulatory approvals; NRG said the proceeds will support $3 billion of share repurchases across 2026 and 2027 and $3 billion of debt reduction in 2027. Morgan Stanley made the day’s other strategic move, agreeing to acquire Vinyl Equity, the digital-first, SEC-registered transfer agent founded in 2022, to bring share-transfer work for its stock-plan clients in house, the bank said. Terms were not disclosed; the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, and Morgan Stanley shares closed up 3.47% at $187.74.

Nvidia’s fall was not about chips. The board said on Sunday that a committee of independent directors, with outside counsel, had opened an independent investigation into whether Chief Executive Jensen Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, following reports of his close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials believe passed information to Beijing, Reuters reported. The board said it had no reason to believe U.S. national security or Nvidia secrets had been compromised, and Huang, who apologized to employees for being unfaithful to his wife, said he would cooperate fully. President Trump said on Monday that Huang told him he had no idea the woman was a spy, and that the FBI was looking into the issue, Reuters reported. The shares hit a seven-month low before closing down 4.27%, even as Oppenheimer upgraded AMD to outperform with a $600 price target. With no clear successor to Huang, who has run Nvidia since co-founding it in 1993, analysts told Reuters the probe opens a stewardship question a week before the company’s November 17 earnings.

After the Close, and the One to Watch

The after-hours calendar kept the energy theme. Occidental Petroleum posted adjusted profit of $1.91 a share against $1.46 expected on LSEG data, Reuters reported, as a realized crude price of $85.91 a barrel outweighed a 2.6% dip in production to 1.43 million barrels of oil equivalent a day; net income was $1.6 billion. Rocket Lab reported record revenue of $267.8 million, up 73% and above both its own $250 million to $265 million guidance and the roughly $257 million expected, though its GAAP loss of $0.12 a share was wider than the $0.07 loss expected; its backlog grew 52% in one quarter to $3.57 billion. Take-Two Interactive’s net bookings fell 18% to $1.601 billion, below the $1.67 billion expected, and its GAAP loss narrowed to $0.29 a share, but it reiterated full-year bookings of $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion ten days before the November 19 launch of Grand Theft Auto VI, with Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick calling pre-orders unprecedented, Reuters reported. The Trade Desk beat a low bar comfortably: revenue of $736 million, down 0.5%, topped the roughly $651 million expected, non-GAAP earnings were $0.33 a share, and the board added $731 million to the buyback, taking capacity to $1 billion, even as GAAP net income fell to $38 million on restructuring charges tied to cutting roughly 15% of its workforce, the company said.

The one to watch is Tuesday, November 10. The October consumer price report lands at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, with economists surveyed by Bloomberg expecting prices to rise 0.3% in the month and core prices 0.2%, after September’s 0.6% and 0.3% — the last inflation reading before the Federal Reserve’s December meeting, and the test of whether Monday’s oil-led relief survives contact with the data. CoreWeave then reports after the close, before Cisco and Applied Materials follow on Thursday and Nvidia on November 17. Tuesday will show whether the rebound was a verdict, or only a pause.

This is not investment advice. Corporate America is AI-assisted research produced with automated data checks; figures are verified against the cited sources at publication time.