US stocks suffered their sharpest selloff in more than a year on Thursday, 5 November 2026, as a rout in technology shares pushed the Nasdaq Composite into correction territory.
The Nasdaq fell 5.5% on the day, its steepest one-day drop since April 2025, leaving it 10% below its record closing high of 27,599.89 reached on 6 October. A fall of 10% from a recent high is widely regarded as a correction. About $2 trillion was wiped off the Nasdaq’s market value in a single session.
The S&P 500 dropped 4.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 3.4%, or 1,833 points, to close at 51,868. Chip stocks were hit hardest: the Philadelphia semiconductor index fell 12%, its second-biggest drop on record, while Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, slid about 9%. Wall Street’s volatility gauge, the VIX, jumped to an eight-month high.
Investors were reassessing the artificial intelligence trade after the Democrats’ sweeping wins in this week’s US midterm elections, with fears of tighter scrutiny of AI infrastructure and data-centre expansion. Weak results from chipmaker Qualcomm and growing doubts about the returns on massive AI spending added to the pressure.
The selloff spread to Asia on Friday. South Korea’s Kospi plunged more than 8%, triggering a circuit breaker that briefly halted trading, while Japan’s Nikkei fell around 5%.
