Dow Soars 1,569 Points After Democrats Win Congress; Chip Stocks Fall 3.13% as Memory Slumps, TAIEX Futures Up 201 Points

Democrats win both chambers; the Dow jumps 1,569 points

According to AP projections, Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate in the midterms and also won several governor races. President Trump said he would accept the results and work with Democrats. Market analysts said a president and Congress from different parties make new laws harder to pass, meaning fewer policy changes and less uncertainty, which helped the Dow post its biggest one-day gain since April 2025. Shares of Trump-linked Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) plunged.

AI data center and memory stocks slump; SOX falls 3.13%

Investors worried that a Democratic-led Congress would tighten AI oversight, and the Democratic candidate in the Texas governor's race has pledged an immediate pause on new data centers, so AI infrastructure stocks fell hard: CoreWeave dropped 9.90%, and several data center builders were down more than 20% intraday. If the data center build-out slows, pressure on memory demand and prices could ease; Micron, SanDisk and Western Digital fell about 7% to 8%. Conversely, lower memory costs would help hardware brands such as Apple, which hit an intraday record. Networking equipment maker Arista rose after an upbeat post-earnings outlook.

Oil falls more than 8% in a day; energy stocks slump

Vice President JD Vance blamed the Iran war for the Republican losses, and according to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump also acknowledged the war was a factor, so markets expect more pressure on Washington to end it. WTI crude fell 8.08% to $88.33 a barrel and Brent 8.40% to $94.90, and the energy sector ETF (XLE) fell 4.74%. The ISM services report also noted that fuel costs and tariffs remain the most common supply chain problems for companies.

Qualcomm's handset chip revenue falls 26%; shares drop after hours

After the close, phone chip maker Qualcomm reported fiscal fourth-quarter results: revenue of $10.32 billion, down 8%, including handset chip revenue of $5.14 billion, down 26%; combined automotive and IoT revenue grew 36%. It guided to next-quarter revenue of $10.4 billion to $11.2 billion and reiterated its target of $5 billion in data center revenue in fiscal 2027. The stock rose 5.33% in regular trading but fell about 7% after hours. Arm, which also reported, posted revenue up 27% to $1.44 billion and slipped after hours.

This US rally was concentrated in software, internet and consumer stocks, industries that carry little weight in Taiwan, while the US peers of Taiwan's largest sectors, semiconductors and AI hardware, fell: the SOX lost 3.13%, Nvidia 3.17%, and AI cloud and server stocks slumped. Taiwan is a main supplier of AI chip manufacturing, server assembly, cooling and PCBs, so market views on the pace of US data center expansion relate directly to order expectations in these industries. TSMC's ADR fell 2.24%, and its premium narrowed to 14.64%.

The slump in memory stocks such as Micron and SanDisk belongs to the same industry cycle as Taiwan's memory makers; one reason Apple rose is that memory cost pressure may ease, which relates to Taiwan's iPhone assembly and component supply chain. Qualcomm's falling handset chip revenue relates to Taiwan's foundry, packaging and testing companies and its phone chip competitors. Plunging oil relates to costs for Taiwan's petrochemical industry and fuel spending at airlines and shipping companies.

TAIEX futures closed the night session up 201 points, well below their intraday high. How Taiwan actually trades today will be updated after the 1:30 PM close, around 4:00 PM Taipei time.