The Nov. 5 stock drop was the worst since April 2025, but outside history’s 20 worst

Fact-check · Markets · 2026 midterms

Reviewing: Donald Trump’s Truth Social post of Nov. 5, 2026, 6:18 p.m. EST · Published 2026-11-05 · 19 sources

Verdicts

• Misleading“The Stock Market suffered one of the Worst Days in History.”In points, yes: the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq-100 posted their largest one-day point losses ever. Points inflate as index levels rise. In percentage terms it was the S&P’s worst day since April 2025, the 11th-worst in the past decade, and outside the 20 worst since 1923.
• MixedThe drop was “based on the results of the Election.”CNBC, the Washington Post and NBC News all name Democrats’ sweep as one driver, through fears that new officials will slow AI data-center construction. NBC also names weak Qualcomm and Arm earnings as the trigger. The same results produced a 1.6% S&P gain the day before, and the selling centered on AI stocks that had been sliding since October.
• MisleadingImplied: the election knocked stocks off record highs (“a level that no one has ever seen before, and then this”).The indexes did set records this year, but the S&P 500 and Nasdaq peaked on Oct. 6 and the Dow on Aug. 5. On Election Day the S&P sat 3.2% below its record and the Nasdaq 8.1% below; even after Wednesday’s rally, none of the three closed at a record.
• Mostly True“Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped.”A stock index fund lost about 4.4% on Thursday. Measured from the Election Day close, the S&P is down 2.8%, and it remains up 7.4% for 2026. The “therefore” carries the contested cause.
• MixedImplied: Democrats are to blame (“it wasn’t Republicans, it was Dumocrats”).No Democrat elected Tuesday had taken office or acted by Thursday; the blame rests on investors’ forecast of their AI policies, which is only part of the reported cause. The day Thursday is measured against, April 4, 2025, followed Trump’s tariffs.

The post

The post is authentic. The archive site Trump’s Truth records it at 6:18 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, with a link to the original on Truth Social, and CNBC quoted its first sentence the same evening.^[1][2][12] The full text:

The Stock Market suffered one of the Worst Days in History based on the results of the Election. Such a sad thing to watch! It took so much work to get us to a level that no one has ever seen before, and then this. Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped. Remember, it wasn’t Republicans, it was Dumocrats. Do not fear, however, we will soon, one way or the other, be BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Forty-four minutes later he posted again: “The Stock Market crashed today because the Dumocrats had a big Tuesday — So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!”^[4] A day earlier, at 12:27 p.m. on Wednesday, he had posted: “Stock Market just hit another Record High … Your 401(k)s are through the roof.”^[3]

What happened Thursday

All four major U.S. indexes fell hard on Nov. 5. The S&P 500 lost 334.89 points, or 4.36%, to 7,353.73. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,833.06 points, or 3.44%, to 51,523.06. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1,421.52 points, or 5.52%, to 24,315.00.^[10][13] The Nasdaq-100 fell 6.36% to 26,629.81.^[9] The previous closes match the St. Louis Fed’s FRED series; FRED had posted the Nov. 5 Dow close but not yet the S&P or Nasdaq closes when we checked.^[5][6][7][8]

The selling was broad. All 11 S&P sectors fell, decliners beat advancers by almost 6 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, and the technology sector lost 7.30%, its worst day since March 16, 2020.^[11] Nvidia fell more than 9% and Micron and AMD about 17% each.^[11][12][15] The Nasdaq closed in correction territory, more than 10% below its October record.^[12]

Precedent: how bad, against which days

Compared against: every daily close of the S&P 500 and Dow in FRED’s ten-year series (Nov. 2016 to Nov. 2026); every close of the Nasdaq Composite since 1971 and the Nasdaq-100 since 1986 in FRED; and Wikipedia’s tables of the 20 largest S&P 500 and Dow daily losses since 1923 and 1896, whose historical rows cite S&P Dow Jones Indices. The Nov. 5 rows were added that evening from news reports, so they are not independent confirmation. Ranks below are our own computation from FRED closes plus the Nov. 5 closes reported by CNBC and Nasdaq.

“Worst day” has two common measures, and they give opposite answers. The point drop is the number on the evening news. The percentage drop is what an investor actually lost, and it is the standard for comparing days across decades, because a 335-point fall means far less at 7,700 than at 2,700.

The point records are real. In our computation from FRED closes, no earlier S&P, Nasdaq Composite or Nasdaq-100 session lost as many points; the S&P’s prior record was the March 16, 2020 Covid crash, at 324.89 points, 10 fewer than Thursday.^[5][7][9] Wikipedia’s tables agree, listing Nov. 5 first for the S&P and sixth for the Dow.^[18][19] But that same March 2020 day cost S&P investors 11.98% of their money, nearly three times Thursday’s loss. The 20th-worst S&P day on record, May 14, 1940, fell 7.47%; the worst, Oct. 19, 1987, fell 20.47%.^[18] In our FRED count, ten S&P sessions in the past decade were worse than Thursday, including two in April 2025.^[5] Those two followed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, so the day every “worst since” comparison points back to, April 4, 2025, was a sell-off tied to his own policy.^[13][15]

The fairest reading for Trump: on the Nasdaq-100, Thursday ranks in the worst 0.3% of sessions since 1986 and was its worst day since March 2020 by our count. That is a bad day by any standard. It is still the 31st-worst for that index, and the S&P 500 fared better.

Source conflict: NBC News reported that the Nasdaq-100’s drop was its worst since April 2025.^[15] FRED shows the index fell 5.41% on April 3, 2025 and 6.07% on April 4, 2025, both smaller than Thursday’s 6.36%, so we use March 16, 2020 as the last worse day. CNBC’s FactSet figures for the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq Composite agree with our counts.^[11]

Verdict on the superlative: the post uses the record that flatters the claim and leaves out the measure that ranks it. Misleading.

Was it the election?

Part of it, by the reporting. The Washington Post wrote that markets “continued to absorb the broad impact of Democrats’ nationwide midterm success,” citing analyst concerns that “the blue wave would snag America’s rapid AI build-out,” dozens of local ballot measures restricting data centers, and new governors in Texas and Ohio who promised to regulate the projects.^[14] CNBC said Democrats’ wins in the House and Senate and in governorships such as Texas “sparked traders’ worries of a potential slowdown in data center construction.”^[12] Democrats won control of both chambers on Tuesday, flipping at least seven Senate seats.^[16]

Three facts cut against the election as the sole cause:

• The results first produced a broad rally. On Wednesday, the first session after the vote, the S&P 500 rose 1.6% and the Dow 1,569 points, or 3.0%, the market’s best day in three months.^[5][6][13] CNBC quoted analysts crediting the clear outcome and Trump’s acceptance of it, which removed fears of a contested result.^[17] Thursday erased that gain and more: from the Election Day close, the S&P was down 2.8% and the Dow 0.5%. The rally did not reach AI stocks: CNBC reported on Thursday that chip and data-center stocks “slid for a second day,” so the AI selling began Wednesday, as the results came in.^[10]
• The AI slide predates the vote. The Nasdaq closed Election Day 8.1% below its Oct. 6 record.^[7] Spectrum News reported that AI stocks “have been swinging for months” on worries that costly borrowing would slow data-center construction and that prices had shot into a bubble; the election “added another challenge.”^[13]
• NBC names a different trigger. NBC News reported that “the sell-off was triggered by two lackluster earnings reports from major chipmakers, Qualcomm and Arm Holdings,” released Wednesday night; Arm fell 13% and Qualcomm 9%.^[15] Analysts read those reports differently: CNBC described Arm’s quarter as a “beat-and-raise.”^[10]

The steelman for Trump: the fear behind the AI selling, data-center curbs, comes straight from who won. CNBC and the Post name it as the cause, NBC names it alongside the earnings, and Asian chip stocks fell Thursday on the same worry even as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 3.61%.^{[10][12][14][15]} That counter is strong enough that we do not rate the claim false. It does not establish that the election caused the drop on its own: the same results lifted the broad market a day earlier, NBC points to chipmaker earnings, and AI stocks were already in a slump. Mixed.

What the post implies

“It took so much work to get us to a level that no one has ever seen before, and then this” tells a reader that stocks stood at record highs until the election knocked them down. The first half is true of 2026: the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at records on Oct. 6 (7,818.93 and 27,599.89) and the Dow on Aug. 5 (54,349.12).^[5][6][7] The sequence is wrong. On Election Day the S&P closed 3.2% below its record, the Dow 4.7% below and the Nasdaq 8.1% below. Even after Wednesday’s rally, none of the three closed at a record on Nov. 4: the S&P finished 1.7% below, the Dow 1.8% and the Nasdaq 6.8%. Trump’s 12:27 p.m. “another Record High” post that day names no index. The Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq-100 did not reach records even intraday; we did not check intraday highs for the S&P or Dow.^[3][8][9] Misleading.

“Remember, it wasn’t Republicans, it was Dumocrats,” and the later “you only have yourselves to blame,” assign the drop to Democrats.^[1][4] What Democrats had done by Thursday was win an election two days earlier, with several races still uncalled; the winners had not yet taken office.^[16] The blame rests on investors’ forecast of their policies, which is the partly supported cause claim above, and it omits that the comparison day for Thursday’s drop, April 4, 2025, followed Trump’s own tariff policy. Mixed.

The credit half, “It took so much work to get us to a level,” implies the president drove the earlier gains. Daily price data cannot test what caused a market level, so we leave it out of scope.

The 401(k) line

A 401(k) invested in an S&P 500 index fund lost about 4.4% on Thursday, so balances held in stock funds did fall that day. Context the post leaves out: the S&P closed Thursday 7.4% above its Dec. 31, 2025 close and 8.2% above its level a year earlier.^[5] The literal statement holds; the word “therefore” imports the cause claim, which is only partly supported. Mostly True.

What it changes

Point-based records will keep arriving. From Thursday’s close of 7,353.73, any S&P drop larger than about 4.6% would set a new point record. Our forecast: as index levels rise, “worst day in history” headlines will grow more frequent even if crashes do not. Readers comparing days should use percentages.

The cause question matters for policy arguments. If the sell-off is read as a verdict on the election, it becomes an argument against the data-center restrictions Democrats ran on. The reporting supports a narrower point: investors priced a risk to AI build-out spending, in a sector already under pressure. Whether that risk materializes depends on what new governors and the incoming Congress actually do, which is a forecast, not a finding. Spectrum News noted that stock prices over the long term follow corporate profits and interest rates “much more than on who controls what in Washington.”^[13]

One open item: Friday’s October jobs report, due the morning after the post, was the next scheduled market test.^[12]

Sources