Wall Street Braces for a Wild Week as Tech Stumbles, Metals Crash, and Trump’s Fed Pick Shakes Markets

Wall Street is stepping into the new week on edge, and for good reason. A volatile cocktail of tech-sector turmoil, a historic collapse in precious metals, surging oil prices, and President Trump’s surprise move to nominate Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair has left investors reassessing risk — fast.

By Friday’s close, all three major U.S. indexes were bleeding red ink. The Nasdaq Composite took the hardest hit, sliding nearly 1% in a renewed tech sell-off and finishing the week slightly lower. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both fell around 0.4% in the final session, capping a week defined less by gains and more by growing unease.

But the headline numbers only tell part of the story.

For months, Big Tech has been the market’s engine, powered by massive bets on artificial intelligence. Now, that engine is sputtering.

Investor anxiety surged after signs emerged that Nvidia’s highly anticipated investment in OpenAI may fall short of earlier expectations. That uncertainty rippled through the tech sector, reigniting fears that the AI trade — once assumed to be a one-way rocket — may not deliver returns quickly enough to justify today’s sky-high valuations.

The divide among tech giants was stark. Meta surged nearly 9% on the week after doubling down on spending plans, signaling confidence in its long-term AI strategy. Microsoft, however, sank more than 7%, punished by investors wary of ballooning costs and unclear payoffs. Software stocks broadly followed Microsoft lower, as earnings from SAP and ServiceNow failed to calm nerves that AI competition is eroding traditional business models.

As one strategist put it, the market is starting to look like it’s making “a single macro bet on AI” — and that concentration risk is becoming harder to ignore.

While tech investors were nursing losses, commodity traders were experiencing outright shock.

Gold plunged more than 9% in a single session — its worst day in over a decade — while silver collapsed by an eye-watering 28%. Platinum wasn’t spared either, tumbling nearly 20%. The dramatic reversal followed months of parabolic gains and appears to have been triggered by a strengthening dollar, margin calls, and rapid unwinding of crowded trades.

Many analysts described the move as a long-overdue correction, but the speed and scale of the sell-off rattled global markets. For assets traditionally seen as safe havens, the message was clear: nothing is immune when positioning gets extreme.

In contrast to the metals meltdown, oil prices surged roughly 7% over the past week. Rising tensions around potential U.S. military action involving Iran — and fears of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz — injected fresh risk premiums into crude markets.

Energy traders now face a delicate balance: geopolitical headlines are pushing prices higher, while broader risk-off sentiment threatens to cap gains.

Hovering over all of this is Washington.

President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair ended months of speculation and subtly shifted market psychology. Warsh, a former Fed governor with a reputation for prioritizing inflation control, is widely viewed as a more hawkish choice than markets had hoped for.

The immediate reaction was telling. The U.S. dollar jumped nearly 0.8%, while stocks drifted lower. Gold’s collapse only accelerated. Investors appear to believe that a Warsh-led Fed would be less willing to aggressively cut rates or deploy the balance sheet to support markets.

If confirmed by the Senate — a process that could face political hurdles — Warsh would inherit a deeply divided Fed and a market caught between slowing job growth and stubborn inflation risks.

The coming days promise little relief. Friday’s U.S. jobs report is expected to show modest payroll growth of 65,000, with unemployment holding at 4.4%. Manufacturing, services data, and consumer sentiment will add more clues about the economy’s true momentum.

On the corporate front, the spotlight turns back to Big Tech. Alphabet and Amazon are set to report earnings, alongside AMD, Palantir, and a long list of heavyweight names from Disney and Eli Lilly to Toyota and PepsiCo. Investors aren’t just looking for profits — they want proof that massive AI spending will eventually pay off.

Until then, markets remain trapped in a tense holding pattern.

Between AI doubts, a historic metals crash, rising oil prices, and a potential shift at the Fed, Wall Street isn’t just watching the data this week — it’s bracing for impact.