Nvidia shares were trading at $182.13 at 5:05 p.m. Italian time, down 8.99% from the November 4, 2026 close of $200.13 and off a session low of $181.55. The US session still has hours to run and the numbers may change, but the direction is clear.
There is no news on the company’s results. The reading that prevails among traders is political: the outcome of the midterm elections held on November 3, 2026.
Why Nvidia is falling: the political cost of data centers
The Democrats did better than expected and now control both chambers of Congress. The market drew a quick conclusion. More scrutiny of artificial intelligence data center construction means slower building sites, less investment by the hyperscalers and, at the end of the chain, less demand for GPUs. The company that supplies more of those chips than anyone else pays first.
According to Reuters, analysts at UBS estimate that roughly 30% of the new data center capacity expected in the United States in 2028 is at risk because of possible pauses in construction. Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, told the agency that «there is now a possibility that the two extra years of the Trump administration’s push to build AI infrastructure will be scaled back in some way». Ted Parkhill, founder and CEO of Incline Investment Management, put it more bluntly: «The market is moving from the promise of AI to the price of AI».
The warning signs were there on November 4, 2026. That day the Dow Jones gained 3.03%, its best post-midterm session in 44 years, and the Nasdaq closed up 1.44% as Wall Street cheered the election result. Nvidia lost 3.17%.
The whole chip sector under pressure
The selling has now spread across the sector. Shortly before 10 a.m. in New York (3:57 p.m. in Italy), Reuters recorded the Nasdaq down 3.09%, the S&P 500 down 1.66% and the Dow Jones down 0.66%, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) already shedding 7.1%. The SOX later fell more than 10%, touching its lowest levels in more than six months, and the Nasdaq came within a whisker of correction territory, a 10% decline from its peak.
Qualcomm added to the pain, falling more than 12% at one point. The disappointment came from smartphone chip sales, stuck at $5.14 billion in the quarter: down 26% from a year earlier and below the $5.25 billion expected, with weak demand and a drop in Apple-related revenue to blame.
The most instructive case is AMD. On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the group reported quarterly revenue of about $13.4 billion, above the top end of its own guidance range. The stock is still down more than 10% today. When a company that has just beaten its own forecast slips, what is under examination is not individual results but the price the market is willing to pay for the future growth of AI.
The backdrop: China and Big Tech capex
The stock is also weighed down by a Reuters exclusive reporting that some 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are sitting in Hong Kong, waiting for Beijing to authorize their import. That is context more than cause: the company’s guidance already assumes no data center revenue from China.
The nervousness did not start today. At the end of October, fears of a slowdown in capital spending by the large platforms had already hit the sector, with the AI race setting off liquidity alarms at Big Tech. The midterms add a political unknown to a question investors were already asking themselves: how long can this pace of investment hold up?
The technical picture
The stock traded as low as $199.68 during the November 4, 2026 session, its first move below $200 since August 3, before closing just above that level. Today the threshold has broken decisively and the stock is pulling away from its 200-day moving average, already lost at the November 4 close, when it stood at $204.67. That line is the reference many traders use to judge the long-term trend. From the record close of October 6, at $239.24, the decline now exceeds 20%. As of the evening of November 4, the 14-day RSI had fallen to 34.5, a level that signals strong selling pressure but is not yet oversold.
November 17 is the real test
Third-quarter results for fiscal 2027, a quarter that ended on October 25, arrive on Tuesday, November 17, with the conference call at 11:00 p.m. Italian time, as indicated in the company’s official press release. In August Nvidia guided to quarterly revenue of $108 billion, with a margin of plus or minus 2%.
To see which line items matter, it helps to go back to Nvidia’s quarterly results and what all the numbers mean. This time, beating estimates may not be enough. The question is about the years ahead, and how much of the order book rests on construction projects that Washington could put under a sterner lens.
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Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Ufficio Studi Money.it on November 05, 2026 as «Perché le azioni Nvidia scendono oggi: midterm e timori sui data center affondano i chip». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
