Wall Street shakes again and erases a big early loss as Nvidia, bitcoin and gold swing

AI stocks once again were at the center of the action. Nvidia, which has become the poster child of the AI frenzy, began the day with a sharp loss of 3.4%, only to erase it and then swing back and forth, before rising 0.7%. It yanked the market in its wake.

Critics have been warning that 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 mania around artificial-intelligence technology. Nvidia's stock has more than doubled in four of the last five years, for example.

But even with the S&P 500's recent swings, the index that dictates the movements of many 401(k) accounts is still just 2.3% below its record set late last month.

“Occasional market drops are the price of the ticket for the ride,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

Outside of tech, Walmart slipped 1.2% after saying its CEO, Doug McMillon, will retire in January in a surprise move. He had helped the nation’s largest retailer embrace technology more.

One way companies can tamp down criticism about too-high stock prices is to deliver solid growth in profits. That’s raising the stakes for Nvidia’s profit report coming on Wednesday, when it will say how much it earned during the summer.

If it falls short of analysts’ lofty expectations, even more drops could be on the way. That would have a huge effect on the market because Nvidia has grown to become Wall Street’s largest stock by value and briefly topped $5 trillion.

That gives Nvidia’s stock movements a bigger effect on the S&P 500 than any other’s, and it can almost single-handedly steer the index's direction on any given day.

Another way for stock prices broadly to look less expensive is if interest rates fall. That’s because bonds paying less in interest can make investors willing to pay higher prices for stocks and other kinds of investments.

Treasury yields had been falling for most of this year on expectations that the Federal Reserve would cut its main interest rate several times this year. And the Fed has indeed cut twice already in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market.

But questions are rising now about whether a third cut, which traders had earlier seen as likely, will actually happen at the Fed’s next meeting in December. The downside of lower interest rates is that they can make inflation worse, and inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target.

Fed officials have pointed to the U.S. government’s shutdown, which delayed the release of updates on the job market and other signals about the economy. With less information and less certainty about how the economy is doing, some Fed officials have said it may be better just to wait in December to get more clarity.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.12% from 4.11% late Thursday.

Bitcoin is one of the investments that can get a boost from lower interest rates. It briefly fell below $95,000 in the morning, back to where it was in May, before climbing back to $97,000. It had been near $125,000 only in October.

The price of gold, meanwhile, sank 2.7%. It shot to records throughout the year as investors looked for something that could protect from potentially high inflation and big debt loads built by the U.S. and other governments worldwide. But interest rates staying higher can hurt gold, which pays its investors nothing in interest or dividends.

In stock markets abroad, indexes tumbled across Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.8%, and London's FTSE 100 dropped 1.3% for two of the larger drops.

AP Writer Teresa Cerojano contributed.