US stocks have their worst day since April 2025 as an AI chip selloff hits the Nasdaq
The Nasdaq fell five and a half percent into a correction as chip stocks slumped on fears of a slower US data-centre buildout after the midterms.
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Update to: US stock futures fall as Democrats are projected to win the House in the midterms
US stocks had their worst day since April 2025 on Thursday. The Nasdaq Composite fell five and a half percent and is now in a correction, more than ten percent below its October record. The S&P 500 lost more than four percent and the Dow fell about 1,800 points. Investors sold chip and AI infrastructure stocks on fears that the new Democratic majority will slow the building of data centres.
The semiconductor sector had its worst day since March 2020. Nvidia fell about nine percent and Broadcom about ten percent. Memory and data-centre suppliers fell further, and smaller AI cloud providers lost between ten and seventeen percent. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a national data-centre moratorium, and strategists at UBS estimate that about 30 percent of the data-centre capacity expected for 2028 is now at risk. That is a forecast, not a measured number. Asian markets followed on Friday, with Japan's Nikkei entering a bear market. Weekly US jobless claims fell to 189,000, which did little to lift the mood.
Sources
- Dow drops 1,800 points; Nasdaq tumbles into correction territory on AI tech wreck — CNBC, 5 Nov 2026 (primary source)
- The Stock Market Today, November 5, 2026, Closed Sharply Lower as the AI Chip Selloff Spread — Stock Titan, 5 Nov 2026