AI in action · Markets
Chip Stocks Had Their Worst Day Since March 2020
The iShares Semiconductor ETF fell more than 12% on November 5, its worst day since March 2020, as investors questioned whether the AI data-centre buildout will slow.
The companies that sell the picks and shovels of the AI boom took the heaviest losses on Thursday, November 5. The iShares Semiconductor ETF fell more than 12%, its worst day since the Covid crash of March 2020, and it was down about 15% for the week. Micron lost 17.46%, AMD 17.26%, Marvell 16.43%, Arm 13.08%, Broadcom 10.43% to $291.53, Intel 10.33%, Qualcomm 9.49% and Nvidia 9.26% to $181.60, according to StockTitan's tally of closing prices. Nvidia's trading volume of about 306 million shares was roughly three times its 30-day average.
The selling did not stop at chips. CoreWeave fell for a second day, Nebius lost about 15% and IREN almost 17%, and power-equipment makers such as GE Vernova and Eaton dropped about 9% to 10%. The common thread is the physical buildout: the companies that make the processors, memory, networking and electrical gear for new data centres all depend on the same pipeline of projects.
That pipeline looked less certain after the midterms. Democrats won both chambers of Congress and governor races in Texas, Ohio and Georgia, and voters rejected data-centre projects in all but one of 41 local ballot measures counted by Ballotpedia. Meta's president Dina Powell McCormick said at a Wall Street Journal conference that building data centres is "going to be harder" after the elections, CNBC reported. Richard Clode, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, expects "a knee-jerk reaction, and that could lead to some delays".
There was also a supply side to the story. Qualcomm's chief executive Cristiano Amon said of his company's soft forecast, "We don't have a demand issue; it's a supply issue," pointing to the shortage of memory that is raising costs across the industry, and Intel's outlook was held back by the same problem. Financing is a third pressure: Meta's free cash flow turned negative in its latest quarter, after Alphabet's and Amazon's had in the prior period, which leaves more of the buildout dependent on borrowing at a time of rising rates.
None of this has reduced reported demand yet; AMD said this week that its data-centre sales more than doubled. What changed on Thursday was the price investors are willing to pay for the assumption that the buildout continues on schedule. Peter Boockvar of OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners put the condition plainly: stocks will trade off "if there is a slowdown in the actual development and the buildings and the infrastructure". The next evidence comes from Nvidia's results on November 17.
Sources: CNBC — AI meltdown: Nvidia and Qualcomm drop more than 9%, pushing Nasdaq to worst day since April 2025 (Nov 5, 2026); CNBC — Stock market news for Nov. 5, 2026 (live updates); StockTitan — The stock market today, November 5, 2026, closed sharply lower as the AI chip selloff spread