Nasdaq Craters 5.5% as Nvidia Wipes Out $440B in Post-Election Bloodbath

Wall Street woke up to a massacre. The Nasdaq plunged 5.52 percent in the steepest selloff in over a year, according to moneycontrol.com, with the damage landing squarely on the tech names that have carried the market for months.

Nvidia led the carnage, shedding about $440 billion in market value. Tesla and SpaceX together dropped roughly $420 billion, a stunning one-two punch from Elon Musk's empire. The Magnificent Seven didn't escape either, bleeding trillions as investors headed for the exits.

The trigger? The US midterm elections, which sent a wave of anxiety through trading desks. Two fears are doing the heavy lifting: the prospect of tighter AI regulation and a slowdown in data centre investments — the very spending that has powered the AI boom and the chipmakers riding it.

The timing stings. Nvidia had been the market's undisputed heavyweight, and Tesla and SpaceX have traded on sky-high expectations all year. A single session just erased hundreds of billions from those bets.

For now, the question hanging over the Street is whether this is a violent one-day reset or the start of something longer. Investors will be watching Washington's next moves on AI rules and any signals from the data centre buildout — the two levers that just yanked trillions off the board.