It was a week that moved in almost every direction at once: a post-election rally, a brutal one-day selloff, and a Friday bounce, all inside five trading days.
Stocks opened the week of November 2 with technology shares already under pressure, then finished mixed on Election Day itself, Tuesday, November 3. Wednesday brought a relief rally as the results became clearer. That calm did not last. On Thursday, November 5, a wave of selling tied to artificial-intelligence-related stocks hit Wall Street hard: the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 5.5 percent, enough to put it more than 10 percent below its recent high and into what traders call a correction, while the S&P 500 lost 4.4 percent and the Dow fell more than 1,800 points, or 3.4 percent, its worst day since April 2025. The Nasdaq 100 alone dropped 6.3 percent, erasing roughly $2.3 trillion in value, while the S&P 500's decline erased about $2.8 trillion. All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 fell, with chipmaker Micron Technology among the hardest hit, down 17 percent on the day.
Friday brought a partial recovery. A stronger-than-expected October jobs report, showing the economy added 165,000 jobs, helped lift sentiment, and investors used the pullback to buy back into some beaten-down technology names; Micron rose 5 percent. By the closing bell, the Nasdaq was up 1.09 percent to 24,579.42, the S&P 500 added 0.31 percent to close at 7,376.86, the Russell 2000 gained 1.05 percent, and the Dow slipped 0.46 percent to 51,285.73. For the week overall, the S&P 500 lost about 2.7 percent, the Nasdaq fell roughly 3.4 to 5 percent depending on the measure, and the Dow was down about 0.9 percent, even though all the major indexes remained higher for the year to date.
The selloff was not confined to the United States. London's FTSE 100 fell 1 percent on Friday to 10,673.94 after an intraday drop of more than 2 percent, reflecting how closely global markets are now tied to the fortunes of a handful of large technology and AI-linked companies. Gold slipped 0.84 percent to $4,079.10 an ounce and silver eased 0.67 percent to $52.03 an ounce, while bitcoin also fell alongside the tech-stock pullback.
Investors will be watching whether Friday's bounce holds or whether the AI-related selloff resumes, along with further commentary on the health of the labor market following the stronger October jobs data.
Why did stocks fall so sharply on Thursday?
A broad selloff in stocks tied to the artificial-intelligence buildout, including chipmakers like Micron, dragged down the Nasdaq and S&P 500 in their worst one-day declines in about 18 months.
Did markets recover by the end of the week?
Partially. A stronger-than-expected October jobs report helped stocks rebound on Friday, though all four major indexes still finished the week lower.