[Anchor]

Wall Street, which surged immediately following the US midterm elections, plunged just a day later. Semiconductor stocks took a heavy hit amid growing concerns that the Democratic Party, which took control of the federal Congress, will begin 본격적으로 regulating data centers.

Reporting from New York, this is Kim Hyunwoo.

[Reporter]

Wall Street, which had rejoiced over the Democratic landslide, froze just a day later.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq, led by semiconductors and big tech, plummeted by over 5%.

Compared to the all-time high recorded in early October, it has dropped more than 10% in the span of a month.

The S&P 500 fell by over 4%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 1,800 points.

They completely gave back the gains made the day after the midterm elections.

All three major New York stock indices recorded their biggest single-day drops since April of last year, when President Trump announced tariff policies.

The selling pressure was concentrated on semiconductor stocks.

Nvidia fell by over 9%, and SanDisk, which makes memory semiconductors for AI data centers, plummeted by a staggering 20% or more.

In addition, Micron dropped 17%, and in the wake of this, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which gathers the stock prices of major semiconductor companies, also crashed by over 12%.

US media reported that about 3 trillion dollars in market capitalization—surpassing 4,000 trillion won in Korean currency—disappeared from the US stock market in just a single day.

Analysts attribute the sharp cooling of investment sentiment to expectations that the Democratic Party, having secured control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, will launch in earnest into regulating data centers.

[Jon Ossoff / US Senator for Georgia (Democratic) : No data center should be built in any community in Georgia against the wishes of the residents.]

Concerns have grown that if the construction of data centers hits a roadblock, demand for AI semiconductors could also wane.

(Video by: Lee Hee-hoon | Video Editing by: Kim Jin-won)