Nvidia’s Scandal Hasn’t Dented the Market. Here’s Why. Sumit Roy Tue, November 10, 2026 at 7:22 PM EST NVDA -4.02% VOO -0.02% QQQ +0.05% SMH +1.16% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Nvidia has been rocked by news that CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a woman US officials reportedly suspect of being a Chinese intelligence asset. But the fallout has barely touched the broader market, the tech sector or even the semiconductor industry.
Nvidia's shares dropped 4.3% on Monday after the weekend revelations, which included Huang's admission to employees that he "was unfaithful" to his wife and the board's announcement of an independent investigation. The stock fell another 6% by midday Tuesday.
Yet the ETFs that hold Nvidia most heavily have shrugged it off. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) surged 2.4% on Monday before slipping 0.7% on Tuesday. The Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) gained 3.5% on Monday and shed 1.3% on Tuesday. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) jumped 5.1% on Monday and dropped 1.7% on Tuesday.
In other words, all three ETFs are higher than they were on Friday.
That's remarkable, considering Nvidia is the second-largest holding in VOO at 6.6% and in QQQ at 7.1%, and by far the biggest holding in SMH at 19%.
Gains in other stocks more than offset Nvidia's losses, even within the chip sector. On Monday, Nvidia's slide shaved about 0.3 percentage points off VOO, but the rest of the fund gained almost 3%, more than making up for it. In SMH, Nvidia cost the fund about 0.8 points, while the rest of its holdings rose more than 7% on average.
Case in point: Broadcom, an Nvidia rival that helps design custom AI chips, soared 8.8% on Monday and another 3% on Tuesday.
It also helped that the market had already sold off heading into the weekend. Concerns about the sustainability of the AI boom had intensified after Democrats' midterm wins called the data center buildout into question, and QQQ fell as much as 15% from its peak last week. Nvidia's rivals and other tech stocks were able to rebound from those depressed levels, with an extra boost from the idea that Nvidia's pain could be their gain.
The episode shows that even in a highly concentrated market, when one stock stumbles, others tend to make up for it.
The same holds for entire sectors. Tech is by far the biggest sector in the S&P 500, with a 36% weight. The State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) has fallen 17% since peaking in early October, a drop that would normally drag the whole index down sharply. Yet the S&P 500 is down only about 4%, because the rest of the market has gained ground in the meantime.
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