US stocks slid on Friday as President Trump said he would nominate Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve, against a background of a rising dollar and a screeching halt to 2026’s roaring metals rally. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 0.4% and 0.9%, respectively, recording another down session for tech stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.4%. Despite Friday’s volatility, all gauges notched slight January gains, with the Dow and Nasdaq posting their third straight losing weeks, while the S&P 500 snapped its losing streak, rising 0.3% over the past five days. Markets are calculating the potential impact after Trump said he has chosen frontrunner Warsh as the US central bank’s next chair. The former Fed governor has a hawkish record on interest rates but has recently voiced support for cuts — which Trump has aggressively campaigned for. The dollar rose on the prospect of Warsh as the Fed’s leader, while gold and silver plunged, putting the brakes on runaway rallies. Gold fell below the $5,000 level, while silver sank as much as 25%, its biggest daily drop on record. On the earnings front, Apple’s shares rose after the iPhone maker’s results closed out a mixed bag of Big Tech reports for the week. While its quarterly profit topped estimates, fueled by record phone sales, its CEO Tim Cook warned the global memory shortage would hit future margins. Meanwhile, shares in Sandisk rose 5% following upbeat forward guidance from the data storage company. Oil producers were another highlight on Friday’s docket with Exxon and Chevron beating earnings estimates by slim margins. Results from American Express and Verizon were also in focus. Fri, January 30, 2026 at 9:02 PM UTC Trump nominates Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed Chair. Opting for a conventional choice to lead the Federal Reserve, President Trump on Friday nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the central bank and succeed Jerome Powell. Warsh has been highly critical of the Fed, writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year that the Fed should “discard its forecast of stagflation” and arguing that it is overlooking that AI will be a “significant” force that will boost productivity and push down inflation. Warsh has criticized Powell personally for making “unwise choices,” such as missing the persistence of post-pandemic inflation. Warsh rejects the belief that inflation is caused when the economy grows too fast and workers get paid too much. Rather, he argues inflation is caused when the government spends too much and prints too much money. Warsh has also said he thinks the Fed should view tariffs as one-off price changes, a view echoed by the White House and many members of the Fed now. Read more here..

Read more at Yahoo Finance: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq slide to cap volatile week and month, metals sink after Trump taps Warsh for Fed