AI stocks sold off hard in a single session. The S&P 500 was down about 3.9% as of 2:30 pm EST, and Nvidia is now trading below where it started the year.
The index had gained on Wednesday before the reversal. It includes Nvidia, Oracle, and other companies betting on the AI buildout, the race to construct data centers and fill them with chips. Micron, which makes memory and storage, fell about 15%. These are intraday figures, so closing numbers could look different.
Democratic victories in the US midterms and votes to curb data center expansion were cited as contributing to the loss of confidence. Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at One Point BFG Wealth Partners, said investors are "questioning" the $1.2 trillion in AI-related capital expenditure that Wall Street has forecast for next year. "Well, maybe that's not going to happen," he said.
The claimed link between the votes and the selloff rests on timing and on that one analyst's read. Boockvar described doubt about spending, not a measured reaction to any particular vote, and a single day of trading cannot separate politics from a broader rethink of the AI trade.
Still, the size of the move says something. A 3.9% fall is large for a broad index, and it shows how much of the S&P 500 now rides on a handful of AI names. Micron's drop may be the more telling number, since a memory supplier's sales depend on those data centers actually getting built.
The $1.2 trillion is an analyst forecast, not a budget anyone has signed. The open question is whether the companies doing the building change their own spending plans, or whether only the forecasters' numbers move.