Nasdaq Up About 1.7% at Midday Friday After 5.5% Rout; OpenAI CFO Says Data Center Buildout Will Continue

After Thursday's rout, when the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% and the Nasdaq 100 had its worst day since March 2020, U.S. tech shares opened Friday, Nov. 6, with a partial rebound.

By midday the Nasdaq Composite was up roughly 1.7% to 1.8%, the S&P 500 was up between 0.9% and 1%, and the Dow was roughly flat, up 0.1%. That recovers only a fraction of Thursday's damage. The Nasdaq remains on track for a weekly decline.

What bounced and what didn't

Nvidia opened up more than 6% and later settled near 4% higher after sliding more than 9% on Thursday. SpaceX rose about 6% and Tesla nearly 5%. Both had been hammered Thursday.

The chipmakers that fell hardest had the sharpest snapbacks. AMD and Micron each dropped more than 17% Thursday. By Friday AMD was up about 12% and Micron more than 8%.

Not everything is green. Microsoft and Apple were still in the red in morning trading.

Outside the U.S., the damage held. South Korea's Kospi closed down 6%, with SK Hynix off more than 10%. Germany, France and Spain finished lower, and London's FTSE 100 fell 1.01%.

OpenAI says the buildout continues

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC on Friday the company will keep building data centers across the United States. "When I think about the midterms, I need to keep thinking about how do we keep investing to meet that customer demand," she said. She added that OpenAI will keep raising capital and will work to "get into those communities and to build trust with them."

That comes after voters pushed back at the local level. Ballotpedia counted 41 local data center ballot contests across 10 states. Voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development proposals in 40 of them. They approved 27 measures limiting development or expressing opposition and rejected 13 that would have supported it.

The lone exception was Hardwood, North Dakota, a town of fewer than 1,000 people.

Texas is the exposure

Texas Democrats took the governor's mansion for the first time in more than three decades and won a U.S. Senate seat for the first time since 1988. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on a temporary data center moratorium and on eliminating certain tax incentives for data center builders.

Texas is poised to overtake Virginia as the largest U.S. data center market and is projected to account for roughly a quarter of new U.S. data center power capacity through 2030. Jefferies estimates that 13.3 gigawatts across at least 248 announced projects could be at risk under a moratorium. UBS estimates about 30% of planned capacity could be affected.

Tech analyst Dan Ives has warned the buildout will slow sharply through 2028.

Washington and the White House

Sen. Bernie Sanders has demanded a "national data center moratorium now." Rep. Ted Lieu of California has promised public hearings and new AI "guardrails." Rep. Greg Casar of Texas wants to halt new construction outright. Democratic leaders want tech CEOs to testify under oath.

The party is split on how far to go, and any sweeping federal crackdown would likely face a Trump veto, according to the Daily Wire's account of the dispute among Democrats. President Trump has put federal weight behind the data center buildout.

Trump blamed Democrats for the slide in a Truth Social post Thursday. "Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped," he wrote. "Remember, it wasn't Republicans, it was Dumocrats."

Not everyone on the investing side expects lasting damage. Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO of Laffer Tengler Investments, said in a note that data centers "will ultimately not be as negatively impacted as many expect," because they will "remind politicians they pay taxes, lots of them." She added: "I think you'll see the left move more to the center on this issue."

In the same period, the economy sent a different signal. The jobs report released Nov. 6 showed unemployment easing to 4.1% from 4.2% in September, but Wall Street shrugged it off and the report did little to steady the tech trade. The sources give differing job-gain figures for the report, so this article does not rely on a single count.

Earnings and the weekend

FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butter noted in a Nov. 3 report that if current results hold through the end of earnings season, the Magnificent Seven will have reported lower earnings growth than the other 493 S&P 500 companies, the first time since Q4 2022.

Nvidia reports third-quarter results later this month. Trading Economics' consensus estimates are earnings of $2.47 per share on revenue of $108.82 billion. Those figures are projections.

Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said it remains to be seen whether the U.S. bounce holds. "Once investors have had the weekend to catch their breath, next week could give a clearer indication of whether the tech trade is going down the pan or fighting back," he said.

The next concrete tests are Monday's open, Nvidia's report, and whether Hinojosa and the new Congress turn campaign promises into actual moratoriums.