Fears of more AI regulation appear to have sparked fear among investors, but concerns about the industry have been growing for some time.
Page F136From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 6 November 2026
Stocks rebound Friday; the blame assigned to voters Wednesday is not withdrawn.
As it ran on the front
On October 22, the S&P 500 fell 1.2 percent, its worst day since July, and the Nasdaq composite fell 2.6 percent.
By Tuesday afternoon, November 3, tech stocks had recovered from that slide. The wire filed that day called the midterms' effect on Wall Street uncertain, noting only that a Democratic majority, if it held, could mean more regulation of the data-center industry.…
…(cont) That night, voters in dozens of jurisdictions passed 44 ballot measures restricting data centers. By Thursday, after Wall Street's worst session in eighteen months, the president was blaming them, by name, calling it "a sad thing to watch."
The rout kept moving east. Asian markets fell sharply Friday following that Thursday selloff, and London was, at one point, headed for its worst day since March. Market watchers called the swings extreme in both directions that week — too much information, one account said, to process in so little time.
US markets did not follow Asia and Europe down. Stocks rebounded Friday from the selloff that had pushed the Nasdaq into correction territory, and AI shares climbed back after trillions in market value had been wiped out — though no receipt filed Friday puts a number on how much of that came back.
The explanation offered Friday for why the selloff started pointed to fears of new AI regulation under a Democratic majority. The same Friday wire noted the industry's spending concerns had been building for some time.
The blame moved from the selloff to the voters within two days of the vote. The industry that warned voters they would end up broke saw its own shares do the recovering; the voters blamed for the selloff show up nowhere in the receipts that tally the bounce-back. The credit for the recovery has not moved anywhere at all, hon.
“The tape panics Thursday, gets blamed on the people who voted against higher power bills, then fixes itself by Friday without a word of credit going back their way. That's the con: the crash gets a villain inside two days, the bounce-back gets filed with no name on it at all. Your 401k doesn't check who you voted for, but somebody sure wanted you thinking it did.”
“Look, the market dropped because Democrats won and investors priced in real regulatory risk for the AI sector — that's just rational price discovery, nothing to do with blaming anybody. And sure, it bounced back two days later for reasons nobody in the receipts bothered to explain, but that doesn't mean the original call was — okay, I hear how that sounds.”
Earlier in this story
- Trump blames voters for crashing markets data-center backers warned them about. By Ruth · the morning edition, 6 November 2026
- Data-center backers warned voters they'd end up poor, then their own stocks lost $2 trillion by Thursday. By Ruth · the afternoon edition, 5 November 2026
- Trump warns data-center opponents they'll end up "backwards and poor," Nasdaq ends up backwards and poor instead. By Ruth · the morning edition, 5 November 2026
The receipts
The stock market saw a rebound on Friday after dipping earlier this week amid AI-related concerns after Democrats won the midterms. Laura Sanicola, a senior writer at Barron's, joins CBS News to discuss.
Investors had been selling off tech shares in part due to concerns the Democrat election victory would mean slower AI development.
With a lot of information to process in a short time, many market watchers said that the moves were extreme — in both directions.
Midterms didn’t appear to have huge impact, though predicted wins for Democrats could mean more regulation US tech stocks made a recovery on Tuesday afternoon after a selloff spooked investors over AI spending. Tuesday’s midterm elections didn’t appear to have a huge impact on Wall Street, though investors are predicting Democrats get at…
Asian and European markets follow US tech rout with many analysts predicting more waves of selling to come European and Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday after the Democrats’ decisive victory in the midterms triggered a rout in US tech stocks a day earlier. A sell-off on Wall Street on Thursday was followed by sharp falls in…
· Sharp drops for AI stocks overwhelm markets worldwide as oil prices jump from the morgue, 22 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.