Thursday’s selloff priced a national data center moratorium that nobody has voted on, and its size says more about how the AI buildout is financed than about who won the midterms.
- The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% to 24,315, at least 10% below its Oct. 6 record, in the three averages’ worst day since April 2025.
- The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 12.2%, Micron and AMD each fell 17% and Nvidia dropped 9.26% to $181.60.
- Fortune counted roughly $3 trillion in lost market value.
- The Dow’s total since Election Day is a loss, as the arithmetic below shows.
The Dow Gave Back the Whole Election Rally and 264 Points More
Fortune reported that the Dow rose 1,569 points on Wednesday, its best day after a midterm in 44 years. Fox Business’s closing report has Thursday’s drop of 1,833.06 points and the 51,523.06 close. Working backward from those two figures gives the two closes nobody printed.
| Session | Dow close | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, Nov. 3 (calculated) | 51,787.12 | |
| Wednesday, Nov. 4 (calculated) | 53,356.12 | +1,569.00 |
| Thursday, Nov. 5 | 51,523.06 | -1,833.06 |
| Net since Election Day | -264.06 (-0.5%) |
The sums are ours: 51,523.06 plus 1,833.06 is 53,356.12 for Wednesday, and subtracting Fortune’s 1,569 leaves 51,787.12 for Tuesday. The S&P 500 has the same shape. It rose 1.6% to 7,688.62 on Wednesday, which puts Tuesday near 7,567, and Thursday’s 7,353.73 close sits about 2.8% below that.
On Wednesday we added Wells Fargo’s state shares and got 44% of planned U.S. data center capacity in four states. We wrote that if the gap between Tokyo and New York closed with Nvidia and Microsoft falling, 44% was the number to watch. It closed that way. Nvidia slipped about 3% on Wednesday and fell 9.26% on Thursday, when Microsoft lost 3.6%.
Two Readings of One Tape
Coverage has settled on the left column. The right one has the better arithmetic.
The policy read. eToro’s Jakub Rochlitz said the market expects the AI buildout to become “slower and more expensive.” The local exposure is real. Gina Hinojosa, who wants an immediate moratorium on new data centers, beat Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, where Wells Fargo estimates 27% of planned gigawatts sit, and voters approved most of 41 ballot measures to slow construction, notably in Ohio. Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for a national moratorium, but the new Congress is not seated until January.
The financing read. CoreWeave’s second-quarter release shows $128 million of adjusted operating income against $640 million of net interest expense, five to one. Argent Capital Management’s Jed Ellerbroek said it feels like “the capitulation phase for the data center capex beneficiary stocks.”
We side with the right column and concede one thing to the left. A governor can delay planned capacity, and planned gigawatts are exactly what a permit can slow. Our read is that the delay matters because of who is paying for it.
For a buyer funded from operating cash, a delay costs a quarter. For one whose interest bill is five times its adjusted operating income, a delay is a refinancing event. In October, CoreWeave’s debt rout had already given the Nasdaq its worst week since June, so the market knew where the leverage sat.
CNBC’s closing report had CoreWeave “off 10%” and “cut in half in just the past month” at the 0:32 mark, and said Nvidia “is now negative for the year to date” at 0:52.
What Settles It
Friday’s Asian session carried the rout to the suppliers. Advantest fell 12.2%, TSMC 9.6% and SK Hynix more than 8%. Goldman Sachs’s Timothy Moe said “the market’s tendency is always to shoot first and ask questions later.”
The two readings predict different next moves. If the policy read is right, a state or utility blocks a named project in the coming weeks and chip stocks trade the headline. If the financing read is right, the next large bond or credit deal from a neocloud or hyperscaler prices wider, whatever any legislature does.
We would watch the debt market first. A 12% day needed a reason and the election supplied one, and whether it was the reason will show up in borrowing costs before it shows up in a statute book.