NEW YORK/LONDON -- Wall Street equities mostly rallied on Friday, reversing course after trillions of dollars of world stock market value was wiped out over fears that Democratic election victories this week would bring tighter U.S. regulations for the AI industry.
Benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were trading higher with technology, communication services and consumer discretionary stocks driving gains. The Dow edged lower on the day. All three indexes were on track for weekly losses following a brutal selloff in the prior session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.08 per cent, the S&P 500 rose 0.61 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1 per cent.
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was up four per cent after slumping to its biggest one-day drop since April 2025. Nvidia rose four per cent, after suffering its worst day since January 2025, when the emergence of low-cost Chinese AI model DeepSeek hammered markets.
Other heavyweight chipmakers, including AMD, Intel, Broadcom and Micron Technology, were up between two and 10 per cent, while Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX were also up five per cent and seven per cent respectively after losses earlier this week.
“Most of the disruption of the AI buildout will not probably occur but it’s just the uncertainty of the change in government from Republican-led to Democratic-led, not only at the federal level but the state, local levels,” said Gerry Sparrow, president and portfolio manager at Sparrow Capital Management.
“That’s causing some disruption in the expectations of investors... The volatility around elections or any political event, whether it be war or terrorist attack, is always going to disrupt the market.”
Texas’ Democratic governor-elect Gina Hinojosa said on Thursday that the state — which already has a large share of U.S. data centres — will introduce new laws to protect local communities from their further mass buildup.
The jitters are hitting an AI trade already under pressure from fears that the massive cost of the data centers and other infrastructure will limit future returns, spurring margin calls and spooking retail investors and hedge funds alike.
Ripple effect
The bounces were in stark contrast with market action in the rest of the world. Europe’s STOXX 600 lost 1.36 per cent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s both slumped about six per cent. For the Nikkei — just like Wall Street the previous day — it was the biggest one-day drop since U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade tariff panic of April 2025.
Taiwan’s benchmark plunged more than eight per cent at one point, before cutting losses as authorities scrambled to stem the selling.
The MSCI All-World index fell 0.28 per cent while MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost nearly three per cent.
Payrolls beat forecasts
The strain on equities meant the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen and Swiss franc all lured safe-haven flows, although the rally in government bonds took a breather.
The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note ticked up to 4.86 per cent, having dropped to its lowest level since September 9 overnight.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls, usually one of the most-focused on pieces of data, but largely overshadowed by the tech drama, showed a stronger-than-expected 165,000 pickup in jobs.
An anticipated slowdown in annual wage growth to below three per cent for the first time in nearly 5-1/2 years did not materialize either as it came in at 3.1 per cent.
Brent crude prices tiptoed back up towards US$100 a barrel, but are still set for their biggest weekly drop since 2020 on hopes the midterms’ results might prompt Trump to de-escalate the Iran war.
Spot gold fell 0.80 per cent to $4,055.09.
(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
