Yahoo Finance reported on November 5 that the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 3.4%, or more than 1,800 points, while the S&P 500 fell 4.4% and the Nasdaq Composite sank 5.5% into correction territory. Chip stocks took the brunt of the damage, as the leading AI chipmaker fell 9% to pace Dow decliners and another chip designer plunged 17%, the outlet reported.
The slide erased the gains from a day earlier, when the Dow had jumped nearly 1,600 points after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, Yahoo Finance wrote on November 4. Even so, the blue-chip index finished Thursday just 1.9% below its record closing high of 54,349 from early August.
The Dow’s Safe-Haven Run Cracks
For most of the week, the Dow had looked like the sheltered corner of the market. Yahoo Finance reported on November 2 that the Dow edged up 0.4% while the Nasdaq dropped roughly 1% as investors rotated out of technology names and into consumer cyclical and financial services shares. One household consumer brand has divided opinion lately, and we covered why a well-known TV host is staying away from the sneaker maker after losing money on it.
On Thursday, that cushion gave way, as the focus turned to what a Democratic Congress could mean for the AI buildout, and for the data centers driving it in particular. Data center power and infrastructure stocks fell by double digits, and the Nasdaq 100 was recently more than 10% below its October closing high. The reversal was fast. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at an equity research firm, pointed out that the VIX volatility index posted its biggest one-day jump in more than two years. It took the Nasdaq just six minutes to erase its entire post-election rally.
A Jobs Report Steadies the Tape
Friday brought a partial rebound. Yahoo Finance reported on November 6 that the US added 165,000 jobs in October, and the Nasdaq gained 1.9% while the S&P 500 rose 1% and the Dow added 0.1%. You might also be interested in reading our piece on why a billionaire money manager and a TV host both still like the iPhone maker.
The stronger jobs data lifted Treasury yields and kept Federal Reserve policy at the center of market attention, Reuters reported on November 6, as the price-weighted index of 30 major US companies held roughly flat.
We shared the expanded list of the 10 Worst Dow Stocks To Buy here. You can see the 5 worst stocks below.
Our Methodology
For this article, we used Finviz to screen the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and calculated each stock’s average upside potential, based on analysts’ average price target. We picked the 10 stocks with the lowest upside potential and ranked them in descending order of upside. We also list each stock’s short interest and number of hedge fund holders as of Q2 2026.
