U.S. stocks spent Friday absorbing two shocks at once. The morning inflation print set a sour tone that never lifted. Then the afternoon ended with the nation's air traffic frozen by a federal order, freaking out anyone currently waiting for Skynet to take over (me).

It was a long week. Nvidia fired its boss without a clear replacement, and the market used it as a major opportunity to continue to sell AI related bubble equities.

Outside tech, the indexes went nowhere. The Dow closed at 52,348, the S&P 500 and $IWM finished flat, and $QQQ fell 1%. Seven of 11 sectors finished green. Consumer Staples led at +1%, and Technology was the weak spot at -2%.

The producer price print came in hot, but Reuters reported the reading did not change expectations for more rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin slid through $68,000. The FAA ordered the ground stop at 3:54 pm ET, minutes before the close, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy traced the failure to a communication issue across the air traffic control centers.

The FAA's ground stop landed six minutes before the close and still ran the day. Microsoft's day-long outage froze work in more than 70 countries, and the stock shrugged. AMD gave back the week's scandal trade in a single session. The tape now waits on Nvidia's earnings Tuesday and Anthropic's debut Thursday.

Today's Briefing:

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered every airport in the country ground-stopped on Friday afternoon. The order came in an ATCSCC advisory issued at 3:54 pm ET, six minutes before the stock market closed. It cited extraordinary circumstances and named no cause.

The RIP: All departing traffic stays on the ground until further notice, and inbound international flights are handled case by case. The advisory window runs to 11 pm ET. United fell 2%, American fell 1%, and the $JETS ( ▼ 0.69% ) airline ETF slipped before the bell cut the reaction short. ✈️

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post that a communication issue hit all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Those centers manage flights across large sections of U.S. airspace. FAA technicians are investigating. No cyberattack has been cited. 🛠️

Cybersecurity stocks caught a bid after the close anyway. CrowdStrike rose 2% in extended trading, and Palo Alto Networks rose 2% with it. Traders priced a cyber angle that officials have not given them. 📈

This is the third nationwide ground stop in modern memory. The last one was the January 2023 NOTAM failure, a morning departure pause that cleared within hours. Flightradar24 counted about 3,100 aircraft already airborne and bound for U.S. airports when the order landed. Those planes still have to land somewhere tonight. 😬

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Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, and Copilot went dark for users across more than 70 countries on Thursday. Businesses stalled, court deadlines moved, and local governments warned that email and phone systems were unavailable. Service began recovering Friday after more than 24 hours. 💻

The RIP: $MSFT ( ▲ 0.17% ) finished up 0.2% at $523.88 after falling more than 2% before the bell. Microsoft said a network-capacity upgrade caused the outage, not a cyberattack or an AI agent, and reported broad recovery by late Friday morning. Basically a faulty update.

The disruption reached beyond office chatter. Maine’s courts warned that emailed protection-order requests might not have arrived, U.S. Justice Department lawyers sought a filing extension, and a criminal trial in Britain was delayed. One bad upgrade became a global work stoppage. 🛑

More than 430M people use Microsoft 365. The stock’s shrug says investors treated the incident as an operational failure, not a threat to demand. Customers still spent Friday waiting for email queues to drain.

$MSFT traders are debating whether the outage dents its cloud moat →

Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom reported no news of their own on Friday. Their stocks fell anyway. The selling that started with Nvidia's leadership crisis spread across the chip sector. Both names had run hard into the week, and the week's earlier winners took the biggest hits.

The RIP: $AMD ( ▼ 8.75% ) fell 9% to $534, and $AVGO fell 5% to $347. Technology was the market's worst sector, down 2%. Neither company had a headline to answer for. 📉

AMD had been the trade that worked while Nvidia stumbled. Traders piled in this week expecting the Huang scandal to send orders toward AMD, a stock that has outrun Nvidia fivefold since 2024. Friday reversed that bet in one session. The stock gave back in a day what the scandal trade had built in a week. The hedge became the exposure. 😬

A hot producer price print did the rest of the damage. Rate-hike expectations stayed alive after the inflation data, and expensive chip stocks are what traders sell first in that setup. Broadcom fell 5% with no company news at all. 👀

$AMD's one-day round trip is the chart: split over contagion or a top ->

Summit fell 6% ahead of Saturday’s FDA deadline for ivonescimab in EGFR-mutated lung cancer, a binary decision after HARMONi met progression-free survival but not statistically significant overall survival. Community is extremely bullish.

Nebius sank 10% and slipped another 2% after hours after delayed third-party data-center capacity pushed revenue to the low end of its $3.0B to $3.4B outlook. Community is extremely bullish.

Almonty jumped 7% after Sangdong produced its first concentrate since 1993 and loaded its first shipment, turning the long-awaited Korean tungsten mine into a commercial operation. Community is bearish.

There's one stock sitting in nearly every index fund in America, and starting in January it's squarely in the new Congress's sights. It's one of three names we spell out in The Blue Wave Playbook, with 7 stocks to own. Normally $19.99. Today it's free.

See 3 stocks to avoid

*3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here.

👀 FAA Grounds All Incoming Flights Nationwide In 'Extraordinary' Advisory, Airline Stocks End Lower

🛢️ Global oil supply returns to surplus for first time since start of Iran war, says IEA

⚡ Microsoft outage shakes up companies, schools and local governments across US

🪙 Will Bitcoin Finish a Second Straight Year Down for the First Time Ever?

₿ Bitcoin plunges to $68,000 as Anthropic IPO frenzy adds to market jitters

📊 FRMI Stock Clocks Best Day Ever After Report Names Amazon As Project Matador Customer

📈 The charts the Stocktwits community is trading, in your inbox by 8pm ET

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