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Nasdaq Sinks 2.9%, VIX Jumps to 19.42: Desk Notes for ISM, Apple and Election Eve

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Desk Notes card, Nov 2, 2026: Friday's tech rout meets election eve. Tiles: Nasdaq down 2.9% to a 25,437.00 close on Friday, VIX 19.42 at Friday's close, 10-year yield 4.93% on Monday.

Monday, November 2, 2026, opens the month one session after a tech-led sell-off that hit every major US index. On Friday the S&P 500 fell 140.32 points, or 1.8%, to 7,580.07, the Dow lost 572.25 points, or 1.1%, to 51,770.31, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 747.73 points, or 2.9%, to 25,437.00, and the Russell 2000 gave up 47.37 points, or 1.7%, to 2,811.84, per La Nación’s market table. Intel fell 28.6%, AMD 11% and Nvidia 4.2%, per Trading Economics. Yahoo Finance put the Nasdaq’s October loss at 5.2%. This morning futures are bouncing and oil is sharply lower, with the midterm elections tomorrow and the jobs report on Friday.

What the late tape said

  • The VIX jumped, then eased. The VIX closed Friday at 19.42, up almost 13% from Thursday’s 17.20, per Saxo and AD HOC NEWS. Investrade reported an intraday spike to 23.93 on Friday. Yahoo Finance’s market page showed 19.09 early Monday, without a timestamp.
  • Rates vol rose too. The MOVE index was at 100.2 on October 30, up 6.7, per The Right Trader, and Saxo also had it above 100.
  • Yields stayed near their lows. Trading Economics had the 2-year at 4.61%, the 10-year at 4.93% and the 30-year at 5.29% on Monday, and called the 10-year level a seven-week low. Saxo also had the 10-year at 4.93%. Trading Economics said markets are pricing about a 75% chance of a Fed rate hike in December.
  • Oil fell hard. TipRanks had Brent down 4.27% to $108.68 and US crude down 4.18% to $99.77 in its pre-market report. Yahoo Finance tied the drop to Iranian and Qatari talks that lifted hopes for a deal, and Trading Economics said OPEC+ kept its output targets unchanged through December.
  • Friday’s data were mixed. The Chicago PMI came in at 55.3 for October, down from 58.8 and below the 56.0 consensus, while the employment cost index rose 0.8% on the quarter, as expected, per Eurasia Business News.
  • Futures rebounded. Yahoo Finance had Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.8% and S&P 500 and Dow futures each up 0.4% in its 7:00 a.m. ET update.

On today’s calendar

  • 9:45 a.m. ET: the final S&P Global US manufacturing PMI for October, with a prior reading of 56, per Yahoo Finance and Saxo.
  • 10:00 a.m. ET: ISM manufacturing for October, expected at 54.7 against 54.5 before. Yahoo Finance listed prices paid at an expected 77.5, new orders at 54.9 and employment at 52. September construction spending is due too, expected up 0.5%.
  • Treasury bills: $95 billion of 13-week and $82 billion of 26-week bills today, and $100 billion of 6-week bills on Tuesday, per Newsquawk.
  • Fed: Chicago Fed President Goolsbee is on the schedule, per Newsquawk. It listed no time, and we could not confirm one.
  • Earnings after the close: Apple and Palantir, plus Vertex, Marriott, Williams and Diamondback, per Saxo. Yahoo Finance had the Apple consensus at $2 a share on revenue of $113.46 billion.
  • Rest of the week: midterm elections and JOLTS on Tuesday; ADP, ISM services and the Treasury’s quarterly refunding on Wednesday; jobless claims on Thursday; the October jobs report on Friday, per Newsquawk. TipRanks also listed AMD, Pfizer, Qualcomm, McDonald’s and Uber among this week’s reports.

What it means for options traders

Friday used up a week’s priced range. Saxo said options imply about a 0.85% S&P 500 move today and 1.84% into November 6. Friday’s 1.8% drop was about the size of that entire weekly figure in one session. That does not make the pricing wrong, since implied moves are averages and not limits. It is a reminder of how far a single day can run inside a week that looks calmly priced.

Term structure across the events. Square-root-of-time arithmetic turns 0.85% a day into about 1.90% over five sessions, close to the 1.84% quoted. On that rough check, the week is priced near evenly by day, even with the election and jobs report inside it. A single quote cannot show where within the week the premium sits, so comparing the implied vol of the expirations on each side of Tuesday and Friday gives a truer read. Calendars live on exactly that difference: a gap between two expirations reflects what is priced for the window between them.

Skew after a down day. Saxo listed a skew reading of 149.76 alongside the VIX. After a sharp drop, put skew often stays bid even as the index bounces, which can make downside structures dearer than the headline VIX suggests. The Nasdaq 100 and the Russell 2000 can behave quite differently from the S&P 500 on mornings like this one.

Rates and oil sit in the same picture. A MOVE reading above 100 and a large oil swing both feed inflation and rate expectations, which matter more when markets are pricing a hike rather than a cut. ISM prices paid is the number in today’s report most directly tied to that discussion.

0DTE conditions today. ISM lands 30 minutes into the session, so same-day spreads near the money can reprice fast in the first hour. Apple and Palantir report after the bell, so index same-day options expire before those results arrive. Elevated vol also tends to mean wider bid-ask spreads around the open, and a same-day spread’s real risk is its defined maximum loss, not a planned exit.

Desk rule for today: read the term structure one expiration at a time, because a single VIX number cannot separate an election, a jobs report and Apple.

Sources

Related reading

This post is for education only. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or option. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Figures are from the sources listed and may be revised; check primary sources before relying on any number.

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