Aftermath of midterm elections sends US stocks plunging, AI trading faces its worst crisis ever, cryptocurrencies drop passively in tandem.

Overnight into early this morning, US stocks suffered a brutal sell-off. The S&P 500 index dropped 4.4%, while the Nasdaq 100 plunged 6.4% — marking its largest single-day decline since March 2020, with roughly $2.3 trillion in market value erased. The semiconductor index dived 12%, and the VIX index surged 70%. On the news front, Democrats won both chambers of the US Congress in the midterm elections. Markets are concerned that the new legislative majority will tighten regulations on AI-related spending and data center construction, with the political shockwave hitting the stock market with a delay. Goldman Sachs’ trading desk analysis noted that if land, power and cabinet supplies in 2028 fail to keep up due to approval restrictions, chip production capacity will become relatively oversupplied, and the prices of memory chips, which were supported by supply-demand gaps, will lose their foundation. In terms of individual stocks, data from BIT Stock Platform shows Nvidia fell 9%, erasing all its year-to-date gains; Micron dropped 17.46%. Memory stocks were hit hard: SanDisk plummeted 22%, Western Digital fell 17%. Previously strong optical communication concept stocks saw steeper declines: AAOI down 20.89%, LITE down 18.68%, MRVL down 16.43%. In the neocloud sector, NBIS fell 14.95%, SHAZ down 19.9%. Among star stocks, Tesla dropped 10.77%, SPCX down 9.05%, Apple down 1.53%. For crypto-related stocks, MSTR fell 9.29%, BMNR down 12.56%, COIN down 9.69%, and CRCL down 8.72%. According to HTX market data, Bitcoin fell sharply after the US stock market opened, then stabilized at $76,000, and is currently trading at $76,292.00.