THE AI TRADE JUST GOT TORCHED! U.S. stocks cratered Thursday as a Democratic midterm blue wave and pledges to slow AI data-center builds collided with soft chip earnings and AI valuation jitters, The Guardian and NBC News reported.
Guardian tallies: Nasdaq −5.5%, Dow −1,833.06 points (−3.44%), S&P 500 −4.36% — more than $3.2 trillion wiped off U.S. markets. NBC put Nasdaq’s plunge at 6.3% (about $2.3tn of market value) and the S&P at −4.4% (about $2.8tn), calling both the worst single-day losses since the April 2025 tariff shock. Memory chips led the carnage: SanDisk −22%, Micron and AMD −17%; Nvidia led Dow fallers, down over 9%.
Asia opened into the bloodbath Friday: Japan’s Nikkei ~−6% (worst since April 7, 2025), South Korea’s KOSPI −6.7%, Taiwan’s TAIEX −4.5%, Guardian reported. Drivers piled on: anti-AI/data-center pledges from newly empowered Democrats, soft Qualcomm and Arm reports, and louder doubts that AI spend will pay off.
Friday’s U.S. October jobs report cut against the panic tape: nonfarm payrolls +165,000 (vs. ~65k forecast), unemployment 4.1% from 4.2%, September revised to 60,000 from 29,000. President Trump blamed Democrats on Truth Social. Elon Musk’s paper wealth is down about $113 billion since the midterms (Tesla then SpaceX hits; Bloomberg Billionaires via Guardian).
Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.
Sources: The Guardian, NBC News
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