Jensen Huang quits Nvidia, which was 7.30% of SPY and about 8% of QQQ before the drop

Nvidia fell as much as 16% on Nov. 12 and closed down 4.3%.

That was the day Nvidia announced, in an 8-K dated Nov. 12, that Jensen Huang was no longer its chief executive.

Both of those figures are from NBC News, which also has the stock down about 11% for the week and $500 billion in value wiped out. Reports of the intraday low run from 13% to 16%, and Al Jazeera, for one, had the shares down more than 14% at one point on Thursday.

In dollars, Nvidia's market value fell from $4.498 trillion to $4.005 trillion by the count of the Yahoo Finance live blog.

Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, has agreed to serve as interim chief executive, according to Nvidia's 8-K filing with the SEC, and the board is starting a search for a permanent one.

For a filing about the chief executive's exit, it says remarkably little, and it gives no reason at all for Huang leaving.

Kress has been CFO since September 2013, Al Jazeera reports, a stretch in which Nvidia's revenue went from $4.13 billion in fiscal 2014 to $215.9 billion in fiscal 2026.

With results due on Nov. 17, handing the job to the person who has run Nvidia's finances since 2013 is the least surprising decision anyone made this week, and at least nobody has to walk her through the income statement.

Whether she becomes the permanent choice is unclear, according to the same Al Jazeera piece, which adds that President Trump has floated Apple's Tim Cook, though none of the reports says Nvidia's board has approached Cook or anyone else.

Huang is not staying on in some smaller role either, with a company spokesperson telling NBC News: "Huang will not be working with Nvidia in any capacity going forward."

I think that clean break is the most useful line Nvidia has put out all week, because it settles one thing about Nov. 17: whoever takes questions on that call, it will not be Huang.

None of the reports sets out Nvidia's succession rules, such as how long an interim chief executive can serve or how the search will run, and none puts a figure on how much of the company's value rested on Huang personally, so both of those are unknown.

The shareholder suit was on file before the announcement, with CBS News reporting that Rosen Law Firm filed a securities class action in federal court in San Jose on Nov. 10, two days before the 8-K, alleging that misleading statements left the share price "artificially inflated."

None of the reports says how the resignation affects that complaint, and whether it gets amended to take in the Nov. 12 fall is not known at the time of writing.

Nov. 10 is the date I would hold onto from this whole story, because the fight over what Nvidia told investors was already in court before the company announced its chief executive was leaving.

Huang's memo is on the record, and NBC News quotes it saying "I was unfaithful to my wife."

The board, meanwhile, has hired a former acting U.S. attorney and a firm to examine whether Huang had fallen victim to a foreign intelligence plot, NBC says, so it is running a CEO search and an outside inquiry at the same time.

The inquiry is the board's own step, so it belongs on the confirmed side, though looking into whether something happened is not a finding that it did.

Past that, the story is reported rather than confirmed: NBC has not independently verified the New York Times account of a relationship with an executive or the alleged spy ties of Alice Huang, and China calls the claims "purely unsubstantiated and directed at smearing China."

Rep. Mast said Huang agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving, according to the Yahoo Finance live blog, which also runs a headline on allegations of a third affair.

A stock that fell as much as 16% and closed down 4.3% is trading on headlines, and some of the loudest ones this week are sitting in NBC's unverified pile.

Index fund holders own a piece of this too, at the weights Trefis gave in early November, before the drop:

• SPY, which tracks the S&P 500: 7.30%, on Nov. 4 holdings
• QQQ: about 8%, early November
• Other S&P 500 funds: nearly the same weights as SPY

On SPY's Nov. 4 holdings, that is a little over seven cents of every dollar in the fund sitting in one company, and on QQQ's early November figure it is about eight cents.

Trefis's figures predate Nov. 12, so they say nothing about the weights after the drop.

On those early November numbers, a holder of SPY or QQQ had roughly a 7 to 8% position in Nvidia, and in my view that is a large slice of a broad fund to have riding on a memo and on reports NBC has not verified.

The next hard date is Tuesday, Nov. 17, when Nvidia reports third-quarter fiscal 2027 results with the call at 2 p.m. Pacific, according to the 8-K.

When the board will name a permanent chief executive is not known, and none of the reports puts a date on it.

Tuesday's call is the first results call on Nvidia's calendar since the 8-K put "interim" in front of Kress's title.