An election result became an AI trade this week. Democrats took both chambers of Congress on Tuesday, the Dow had its best day since April 2025 on Wednesday, and on Thursday the market decided the same result could slow America's data centre buildout, sending the Nasdaq to its worst day since April 2025. That's why we built Winvesta Crisps, to cut through the noise and tell you what actually moved markets and why. 60,000+ investors from across India are already in. What about you?
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Wall Street cheered the midterm result for exactly one day. Wednesday's relief rally added more than 1,500 points to the Dow as oil fell over 8%, then Thursday's chip crash wiped roughly $3 trillion off the S&P 500, per Yahoo Finance, and pushed the Nasdaq Composite into a correction. The question that now drives US tech is no longer only whether AI spending pays off, but whether Washington and the states will let the data centres get built at all.
📊 Market recap
Monday set the tone. The S&P 500 slipped 0.51% to 7,541.40 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.07% to 25,164.32, while the Dow rose 0.41% to 51,983.98, per CappNotes. The Nasdaq-100 fell 1.39% and closed more than 10% below its 6 October record, its first close in correction territory, per Yahoo Finance. The damage was concentrated in AI names: Marvell fell about 12.7% after agreeing to buy Lumentum in an all-stock deal, Lumentum itself dropped about 18.6%, and Oracle lost about 8.8% after filing to sell $10 billion of stock and $10 billion of notes to fund its AI buildout. Oil had its sharpest fall in three months on hopes for US-Iran diplomacy, with Brent down about 7.6% to around $105 a barrel.
Tuesday was election day, and markets waited. The S&P 500 edged up 0.36% to 7,568.92 and the Nasdaq gained 0.83%, led by technology, while the Dow slipped 0.38%, per CappNotes. Apple fell about 1.9% on a weak margin forecast and China revenue worries. The VIX stayed just above 20.
Wednesday brought the verdict and the rally. Democrats won majorities in the House and the Senate, per CNBC, and President Trump said he was willing to accept the results. The Dow jumped 1,569 points, or 3.03%, to 53,356.12, its best day since April 2025, while the S&P 500 rose 1.58% to 7,688.62 and the Nasdaq gained 1.44%. Oil did as much work as politics: Brent fell about 8.7% to around $95 and WTI about 8.3% to around $88 after Vice President JD Vance linked Republican losses to the Iran war, which analysts read as added pressure to end it, per CNBC and CappNotes. Apple rose about 6% to a record intraday high, banks and retailers rallied, and the VIX dropped about 20% to 16.61. The warning sign was buried in the sector table: technology finished flat while every other big sector except industrials and energy rose more than 2%, as Nvidia and CoreWeave fell on fears of curbs to AI infrastructure.
Thursday was the reckoning. Selling started in chips and spread to everything. The S&P 500 fell 4.36% to 7,353.73, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.52% to 24,315.00, and the Dow lost 3.44% to 51,523.06, per CNBC. All three had their worst day since April 2025, and the Nasdaq Composite closed nearly 12% below its October record, per Yahoo Finance. The PHLX Semiconductor Index fell about 12%, its worst day since March 2020. Micron lost about 17.5%, AMD about 17.3%, Broadcom about 10.4% and Nvidia about 9.3%, per StockTitan. The trigger was a mix of politics and earnings: investors priced in a Democratic Congress, a new Texas governor who has called for a data centre moratorium, and failed state ballot measures on data centre development, per CNBC, while Qualcomm and Arm both fell sharply after their own results. Only about one in seven S&P 500 stocks finished higher, per Yahoo Finance.