Markets

Markets Today: Nasdaq enters correction as AI rout erases the post-election rally (November 5, 2026)

By ToolPilot Editors · Updated November 5, 2026

Nasdaq falls 5.5% into correction and Bitcoin slides below $76,000 on November 5, 2026, as the AI trade unwinds after the midterm sweep.

Thursday wiped out Wednesday's post-election rally — and then some. The Nasdaq fell 5.5% into correction territory, the S&P 500 had its worst day since April 2025, and Bitcoin slid back below $76,000 after briefly topping $80,000 earlier in the day. Chip stocks fell more than 12%, and crypto followed stocks down. Stock closes as of 4 p.m. ET; crypto as of about 5:15 p.m. ET, November 5, 2026. This is not financial advice.

Crypto snapshot

Bitcoin erased its post-election rally, The Motley Fool reported, falling from above $80,000 to an intraday low near $75,568. Ethereum fell harder, dropping almost 8%. The total crypto market cap fell to $2.57 trillion from $2.69 trillion on Wednesday — more than $120 billion erased in a day, Coinpedia reported, citing CoinMarketCap data. More than $1 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in 24 hours, CoinDesk reported, citing CoinGlass.

Stock market snapshot

Closing levels per The Retest's closing brief, citing AP data, matching The Motley Fool's closing report. The Dow's 1,833-point drop more than erased Wednesday's 1,569-point gain. The Nasdaq is now more than 10% below its October 6 record close of 27,599.89 — the usual definition of a correction — and the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.36%. The VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped about 69% to around 28, its largest one-day jump since April 2025, Reuters reported.

Today's winners and losers

Stocks

• Losers: Chip and memory stocks led the rout. SanDisk sank about 22%, Micron fell 17.5%, AMD dropped 17.3% and Marvell declined 16.4%, Reuters reported. Nvidia fell 9.26% to $181.60, Broadcom dropped 10.4% and Arm lost 13.1%. Tesla sank about 11% and Qualcomm fell 13.7% on a mixed earnings report. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 12.25% — its second-biggest drop on record.
• Winners: There were few places to hide, but defensive names held up best: Costco rose about 1.8% as consumer staples outperformed, and gold rose 0.46% to $4,091.80, The Motley Fool reported. Bonds rallied too, with the 10-year Treasury yield falling to about 4.84%.

Crypto

• Winners: Almost nothing in crypto was green. The exceptions were gold-backed tokens: Tether Gold rose 1.42% and PAX Gold 1.35%, tracking gold's safe-haven gain, according to CoinStats' live movers board.
• Losers: Uniswap fell 9.36% and Worldcoin 8.02% to lead the top-100 declines, per CoinStats. Near Protocol dropped about 8.4%, XRP fell 6.5%, Solana 5.8% and Dogecoin about 7%.

What's driving the moves

• The midterm sweep, reassessed. Wednesday's rally cheered Democrats winning both chambers of Congress. By Thursday, investors were pricing in the other side: calls for a national moratorium on new data-center construction — Senator Bernie Sanders publicly backed one — and voters in ten states rejecting most local data-center measures, Reuters reported. Traders now worry the AI build-out could slow.
• AI spending doubts. The sell-off hit hardest at the companies building and financing AI capacity — chipmakers, memory makers and GPU-cloud operators — while the big cloud owners fell far less. Investors are questioning whether AI capital spending is outrunning cash flow, and credit markets are charging more for the risk: CoreWeave's debt has traded at distressed levels, Morningstar reported.
• Rates and the Fed. The Bank of England raised rates for the first time since 2023, while two Fed officials said gradual tightening is the best way to fight inflation, Reuters noted. But the sell-off cut the market's odds of a December Fed rate hike to about 66% from 83% the day before, Morningstar reported, citing CME FedWatch.
• Oil jumped on Hormuz reports. Brent crude settled up $3.67 after reports of tankers being hit in the Strait of Hormuz — a sharp reversal from Wednesday, when oil plunged about 8% on hopes of easing tensions with Iran.
• The social mood turned to "bubble" talk. On Threads and Instagram, the day's chatter framed the rout as the AI bubble popping, with posts debating data-center regulation — one widely shared clip called it the worst Nasdaq day its creator had ever seen.

What investors are watching next

Friday brings the October jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET — economists expect 65,000 new jobs and unemployment steady at 4.2%, Reuters reported — and after Thursday's close, Airbnb, Cloudflare, Atlassian, Affirm and DraftKings all report earnings. Nvidia, the market's AI bellwether, reports on November 17. On the commentary side, Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC the market is "overdoing it" on AI fears and expects smarter adoption rather than no adoption, Stocktwits reported — his view, not ToolPilot's. UBS strategists still expect the Fed to hike twice, in December and March, but said the AI build-out could take longer after the election, Morningstar noted.

Bottom line: One session erased the post-election rally and put the Nasdaq in correction territory. The trigger was political — a new Congress and a backlash against data centers — but the selling landed on a market already uneasy about AI spending, high yields and stretched valuations. Friday's jobs report is the next test of whether this was a one-day repricing or the start of something longer. Nothing here is a recommendation.