NEW YORK (The Thursday Times) — Technology and artificial intelligence stocks fell sharply on Wall Street on Thursday, a day after Democrats swept the US midterm elections, leaving the Nasdaq more than 10 per cent below its record high.
By around midday the Nasdaq was down 3.9 per cent, the S&P 500 down 2.8 per cent and the Dow Jones down 2.2 per cent. The Nasdaq was down more than 5 per cent at one point. These are figures from during the session and may change by the close.
Shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX fell more than 7 per cent in early trading and Tesla more than 9 per cent. Musk spent nearly $450 million backing Republican campaigns. Over the past five days AMD has lost nearly 17 per cent, Micron more than 20 per cent, Intel more than 18 per cent and Nvidia more than 10 per cent.
Markets fear tougher scrutiny of data centres and the AI industry after Democratic wins. Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on a moratorium on new data centres. “You can’t just tweet and say: ‘This is going to be good.’ You need to be in those communities,” OpenAI president Greg Brockman told a conference. Some investors also worry that AI shares are in a bubble.
Pakistan went the other way. The KSE-100 index closed up 1.96 per cent at 175,380 points on Thursday, helped by lower global oil prices.
