| S&P 500 | 7,353.73 pts | −4.36% | Down 334.89 points, its biggest one-day drop since April 2025, wiping out the previous day's gain and closing below the Nov 3 close. According to Reuters, all 11 sectors fell, with tech down 7.3%; Tesla fell about 10.8% and Meta about 4%. Investors worried that a Democratic-led Congress and new policies in states such as Texas will slow AI data center construction, and the AI stocks that had led the market higher became the center of the selling. The index is about 5.95% below its Oct 6 record of 7,818.93. |
| Nasdaq Composite | 24,315.00 pts | −5.52% | Down 1,421.51 points and about 11.9% below its Oct 6 high of 27,599.79, a "correction" of more than 10%. The QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq-100, fell 6.49%. According to CNBC, the Magnificent Seven lost more than $1 trillion in combined market value in one day; Amazon, which had surged the day before, fell 2.19% and Apple about 1.5%, less than the chip stocks. |
| Dow Industrials | 51,523.06 pts | −3.44% | Down 1,833.06 points, more than the previous day's 1,569.40-point gain, erasing the entire post-election rally. The Dow is weighted toward traditional industries and large caps with less chip exposure, so it fell less than the Nasdaq; but the selling spread to every sector, and none rose. It is about 5.20% below its Aug 5 record of 54,349.12. |
| PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 9,011.14 pts | −12.25% | Down 1,257.51 points, its second-biggest one-day drop on record according to Reuters; over two days it has fallen about 15.0% from 10,600.40 on Nov 3. Memory and AI chips fell the most: SanDisk −22.26%, Micron −17.46%, AMD −17.26%, Marvell −16.43%, Arm −13.08%, Broadcom −10.43%, Intel −10.33%, Qualcomm −9.49%. Nvidia fell 9.26% to US$181.60, below its end-2025 close of US$186.50, turning negative for the year. TSMC's ADR fell 10.78%. Per Yahoo Finance data, the SOX is about 38.4% below its one-year high of 14,634.72 set on Jun 22. |
| VIX | 28.18 pts | +69.66% | Measures expected stock market volatility over the next 30 days. It rose 11.57 points in a day: it had just fallen from above 20 to 16.61 the day before, and now jumped back above 28, its highest level since late March according to CNBC, a sign of rapidly rising market anxiety. |
| 10-year Treasury yield | 4.84% | −6 bp | Per the US Treasury, down from 4.90% to 4.84%; the 2-year fell 12 bp to 4.46%, with short-term yields falling more. Investors bought Treasuries for safety as stocks slumped and scaled back expectations of another Fed hike: according to CNBC, citing CME FedWatch, the odds of a December hike fell from 82.7% the day before to 70.1%. Third-quarter labor productivity, released the same day, rose at a 3.6% annual rate and unit labor costs fell 0.7%; according to CNBC, initial jobless claims were 189,000, down from 195,000 the week before. |
| WTI crude | US$91.40/bbl | +3.72% | Per the Yahoo Finance front-month contract, up $3.28 from US$88.12 (the NYMEX settlement was US$90.52, up 2.72%, taken at a different time than the closing quote; the US$88.33 cited in yesterday's brief was an earlier quote). It rebounded after falling 8% the day before on hopes the Iran war could end sooner: according to Reuters, citing the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), at least five vessels have reported incidents in the Gulf since Sunday, putting supply risk back in focus; US crude and gasoline inventories also fell last week. Brent closed at US$99.44/bbl, up 5.09%. |
| Gold (December futures) | US$4,101.90/oz | +0.71% | Per Yahoo Finance, up $28.90 from US$4,073.00 (the US$4,072.30 cited in yesterday's brief was an earlier quote). With stocks slumping and Treasury yields falling, money moved into safe havens; the dollar index was nearly flat at 101.57, up 0.06%. Bitcoin fell about 6% along with other risk assets. |