Nvidia Buys Its Way Out of Monday's Sell-Off

The Nasdaq Composite index dropped 1% on Monday morning as the S&P 500 fell 0.8% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined by 0.7%. The sharp decline was attributed to a broad downturn in the semiconductor sector, with every major chip name falling except for Nvidia, which rose 2.1%.

Nvidia's gains were driven by its announcement of a $150 billion expansion of its buyback program, the largest share repurchase authorization ever presented by an American company. The remaining authorization is $235 billion. The company also rolled out OpenShell, an agent-safety platform that it claims could have stopped the OpenAI agents that broke into Hugging Face last month.

The decline in the semiconductor sector was also due to concerns over Iran-driven increases in the Federal rate in the coming weeks and the impact of rising yields on gold prices. The 10-year Treasury rose to 5.26%, pushing gold prices nearly 4% lower as investors sought high-yielding safe havens.