Nasdaq Suffers Its Deepest One-Day Drop in 19 Months as Chip Stocks Slide
The Nasdaq fell 5.52% to 24,315.00 points on Thursday, November 5, 2026, its deepest one-day drop in 19 months, according to Reuters. By Friday, November 6, the decline had spread to Asia and Europe, while U.S. index futures pointed to a rebound.
Futures are contracts to buy or sell at a set price on a later date, so their moves hint at where the market may open. They are not the same as the index recovering.
The arithmetic is worth spelling out. A 5.52% fall needs a gain of roughly 5.8% to get back to the starting level, and that matters most for anyone holding concentrated growth exposure. In my view, a futures bounce tells us little until the index actually climbs back, and that distinction will matter over the coming sessions.
Bloomberg described the session as the worst U.S. stock rout since 2020, one that left "virtually nowhere to hide." The selling reached well beyond chip names. Shares of chipmakers such as Nvidia Corp. fell alongside defensive holdings such as Walmart Inc.
That pattern usually means investors are cutting overall risk, not rotating from one sector into another. For multi-asset portfolios, that correlation is the uncomfortable part. Spreading money across different stocks did little to cushion the blow on Thursday.
Year to date, the picture is less dire. As of November 5, the S&P 500 was up 7.4% in 2026 and the Nasdaq was up 4.6%, according to Reuters. Those figures sit close to the Thursday close. The Nasdaq's heavier weighting toward semiconductors and large-cap technology is what drove its steeper fall.
A single session has taken a large bite out of those gains without erasing them.
On Friday, WSJ live coverage reported futures tied to the Nasdaq-100 gaining more than 1%, against a backdrop of heavy losses overseas. That is a partial retracement, not a reversal.
Asia-Pacific markets slid on Friday after the Wall Street rout, as The Guardian's live coverage reported. Taiwan's market closed down 4.5% on November 6, according to Reuters. The WSJ's live page framed the Asian session as one where the selloff was spreading.
Taiwan's heavy exposure to semiconductor supply chains makes it a natural transmission point for the chip sell-off.
European equities followed. CNBC reported the Stoxx 600 down 1.23% on November 6, with every sector in negative territory. DW reported that most major European markets fell more than 1%, with media, healthcare and retail stocks leading the declines, each dropping more than 2%.
Bloomberg has published a newsletter, "Wall Street Weighs In on Healthcare After the Midterm Rout," examining what the midterm results mean for health stocks.
The healthcare move deserves attention. A European healthcare drop of more than 2% on the same day suggests the sector's exposure to the global risk-off move is not only a U.S. story, and U.S. coverage is already reading it through a political lens.
Coverage has tied the chip weakness to concerns about AI spending. Euronews's headline on the rout linked it to fears over AI data-centre demand and described the U.S. chip sell-off as the worst since 2020.
Attributing a cause to a multi-day move is always provisional. The market may be pricing a narrative as much as a set of earnings revisions.
The sequence so far is a steep U.S. decline on Thursday, a futures bounce in the U.S. on Friday, and a weaker open across Asia and Europe over the same period.
For ordinary savers, the practical exposure runs through index funds and retirement accounts that track the Nasdaq or the broad market. A 5.5% move in one session is large, and it lands hardest on investors whose holdings sit in the same handful of names.
For professionals, the more useful questions are whether the correlation between chip stocks and defensive sectors persists, whether the Asian sell-off keeps tracking the U.S. chip complex, and whether Friday's futures rebound holds into the U.S. open. Those are open questions. The data so far describe one violent session and a partial bounce.
