By Joe Stonor
Nasdaq futures recovered some ground as an artificial-intelligence selloff paused following a rout in Asian tech stocks, ahead of crucial U.S. jobs data later Friday.
Tech-heavy Asian indexes slumped as Thursday’s brutal market selloff in the U.S. spread across the globe. The South Korean Kospi closed more than 6% lower to log its worst day since 2025, after trading was halted for 20 minutes amid panic selling. Japan’s Nikkei 225 officially entered a bear market having now dropped more than 20% from its June peak, while major indexes also fell in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
AI stocks that had plummeted Thursday rallied in the U.S. premarket, however. Nasdaq futures rose 1.6% after the index lost $2.5 trillion in market value Thursday in its worst day since April 2025. S&P 500 futures gained 0.3%, though the Dow Jones Industrial Average looked set to extend declines. Contracts tied to the Dow fell 0.9%.
Investors are reassessing their bets on AI after a Democratic sweep in the U.S. midterm elections raised the prospect of political intervention slowing the build-out of AI data centers. Semiconductor and cloud-computing stocks were routed across the globe.
In signs of a tentative recovery, Nvidia shares rose close to 4% premarket as chip makers that plummeted Thursday regained some ground. European AI stocks were also in the green after two days of heavy selling. ASML–the continent’s most valuable company–added 3.7%. The tech rally wasn’t enough to support European indexes, however. The Stoxx 600 fell 1.7% as all major indexes on the continent declined.
The tentative recovery Friday suggests traders might have overreacted Thursday to the Democratic sweep, said Anthony Willis, senior economist at Columbia Threadneedle.
“I think we need to take some of the worries with a little bit of a pinch of salt,” said Willis. “The Democrats are not going to want to crush this momentum.”
Treasury yields rose slightly heading into U.S. October nonfarm payroll data. Ten-year yields edged higher from near-two-month lows to trade around 4.870%. Thirty-year yields hovered around 5.280%. Yields will likely move on the jobs print, with hot data likely to add to the chances of a Federal Reserve rate hike in December. The market currently prices a 72.6% chance of a quarter-point hike, according to LSEG.
Oil prices edged lower, further easing pressure on Treasury yields. Benchmark Brent crude oil contracts were around 0.4% lower at $97.90 a barrel. The dollar moved higher against a basket of currencies ahead of the jobs print. Gold contracts in New York fell back below $4,100 a troy ounce. Bitcoin inched above $76,000.
For the day ahead, jobs data is the main focus. A slate of Fed policymakers are due to speak.
Write to Joe Stonor at josephmichael.stonor@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 06, 2026 08:18 ET (13:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.