Market Movers

Crude prices dropped sharply in the first days of November. Oil fell more than 7% on Monday, November 2, after Washington and Tehran signaled openness to a settlement, and fell again Tuesday, with Brent settling at $103.60 and WTI at $96.09, CNBC reports. CNBC also cites a Wall Street Journal report that the US struck Iran's Qeshm Island on Monday as part of 'limited strikes' in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, after Democrats swept Congress, Vice President JD Vance posted 'The reason we lost is the war.' WTI fell 8.3% to $88.12 and Brent 8.7% to $94.62, leaving oil down more than 14% for the week. Analysts told CNBC the market now expects Trump to have a bigger incentive to make a deal; Trump told the Financial Times he had no immediate plans to strike Iran. Others warned the selloff may be overdone and that escalation risk remains, with ship attacks continuing in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

Anthropic filed an amended Form S-1 with the SEC on Monday, November 2, adding third-quarter financials to the IPO prospectus it published the week before, CNBC reports. Revenue for the nine months to September 30 was $33.24 billion, up roughly 1,200% from a year earlier. Third-quarter revenue was about $17 billion, but growth slowed quarter over quarter: about 47%, down from 144% in the second quarter and 132% in the first.

The company reported a $104 billion net loss for the nine months, mostly from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities; the third-quarter loss was $23.29 billion. Anthropic disclosed purchase commitments and leases totaling about $895.4 billion, almost all for compute and infrastructure, and said compute and infrastructure expenses rose 329%.

A separate CNBC piece notes the filing landed in a rough week: Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon results added to worries about AI spending and the borrowing costs of the data center companies Anthropic relies on. No pricing or listing date was announced in the window.

SpaceX shares fell about 9% and Tesla about 11% on Thursday afternoon, November 5, and by the close the two companies had lost about $456 billion in combined market value since Tuesday's election, CNBC reports. The drop came alongside a broad tech selloff.

Elon Musk was the biggest donor to Republican candidates and causes in the midterms, with more than $470 million, according to the Financial Times, and most of the candidates he backed lost. In Texas, where both companies are headquartered, Democrats won the Senate and governor races; Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on a moratorium on new data center approvals. Deutsche Bank analysts wrote that SpaceX could face 'incremental headwinds' and that its Texas compute capacity, including the planned Terafab chip and data center site in Grimes County, could be delayed.

CNBC also reports that, citing CNN, Musk and SpaceX have been told to preserve records on Starlink restrictions in Ukraine, and that regulatory scrutiny could complicate Musk's idea of merging the two companies.

US stocks rallied on Wednesday, November 4, after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday's midterm elections. The S&P 500 gained more than 1%. CNBC reports that strategists credited President Trump's statement overnight, to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, that he accepted the results and would work with Democrats, which eased fears of a drawn-out fight over the outcome.

The biggest tech companies led: during the session Amazon rose 8%, Alphabet more than 6%, Apple nearly 7%, Microsoft 4% and Meta 3%. JPMorgan Asset Management's David Kelly said divided government means 'moderation in growth, moderation in inflation, less uncertainty.' Stocks tied to the AI data center buildout and to Elon Musk fell: CoreWeave dropped 10%, after voters sided against data centers in 40 of 41 local ballot measures, according to CNBC.

The rally did not last: the next day the market gave back those gains and more.

US stocks had their steepest one-day drop since April 2025 on Thursday, November 5. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% and closed more than 11% below its October record, which puts it in correction territory; the S&P 500 lost about 4.4% and the Dow about 1,833 points, or 3.4%, according to CNBC.

AI-linked stocks led the decline as investors weighed whether Democratic wins in Tuesday's midterms, including a Texas governor-elect who campaigned on a data center moratorium, could slow data center construction. The tech sector fell 7.3%, its worst day since March 2020; the iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 12%. The 'Magnificent Seven' lost more than $1 trillion in market value, with Nvidia down more than 9% and now negative for the year. The VIX volatility index posted its biggest point gain since April 2025.

CNBC notes that across 10 Nasdaq corrections in the past decade, the index averaged a 9.41% gain over the three months after the bottom, with 2022 the main exception.