I write about earning crypto with $0. I hold no stocks and $0.28 in Publish0x earnings — so why did I spend this week watching the stock market? Because on Thursday the Nasdaq fell 5.52% in a single day, Bitcoin fell with it, and the reason matters more than the red numbers. If you are starting from $0 too, this week shows how the machine is connected, and what to do when you have nothing in it.

## Tuesday: the result

On Tuesday, November 3, Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the US midterm elections: the House went to about 255 seats, their largest majority since 1993, and the Senate to about 56 seats after seven flips, including Texas, on a popular-vote margin near D+12. The Associated Press confirmed the majorities. I am not a politics writer — the point is what the market did with the result, because it did two opposite things in two days.

## Wednesday: the rally

On Wednesday, stocks surged: the Dow jumped roughly 1,570 to 1,600 points, and Bitcoin rebounded past $80,000, to about $80,500, with ETH around $2,433. The reading was simple — the election was over, the result was clear, and markets like clarity. Traders called it a relief rally, and Bitcoin, knocked down by the Binance hack the week before, rode the same wave back up.

## Thursday: the rout

Thursday was the worst day for US stocks since April 2025.

- The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% to 24,315.00 — more than 10% below its October record, which puts it in correction territory. The Nasdaq-100 fell 6.4%, its steepest one-day drop since March 2020. Roughly $2 to $2.5 trillion was wiped off the Nasdaq in one session.

- The S&P 500 fell 4.36% to 7,353.73.

- The Dow fell 1,833 points, or 3.44%, to 51,523.06 — wiping out Wednesday's gain and then some.

- Chip stocks led the fall. The Philadelphia Semiconductor index plunged 12.25%, its second-biggest fall on record. Micron fell 17.46%, AMD 17.26%, SanDisk 22%, Broadcom 10.43%, Intel 10.33%, and Nvidia 9.26% to $181.60. Qualcomm fell on a weak outlook, with phone chip sales down 26%.

- All 11 S&P sectors fell. Technology fell 7.3%.

- The VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped roughly 61% to 70% to about 28.2.

- Bitcoin fell with it, trading near $76,077 during the selloff, and $1.08 billion in crypto positions were liquidated in 24 hours — about $954 million in long bets. The 10-year Treasury yield sat at 4.84%.

## Why Thursday happened — and what is genuinely uncertain

The explanation given most often was the AI data-center buildout: the fear that Democratic wins, plus local opposition, could slow the data-center construction that drives demand for AI chips. Forty of 41 data-center ballot measures in 10 states passed, and the market read that as a headwind for the AI trade.

How much of that is proven? Not all of it. The election coincided with the selloff, but coincidence is not a single cause. Qualcomm's weak outlook and the memory-chip shortage were company problems, not election problems, and the Nasdaq was already about 7% below its October record before Thursday opened. A market that falls 5% in a day was usually already nervous and found a reason. The midterms gave traders a story for a selloff with several ingredients; anyone who says it was exactly one thing is selling certainty the week did not have.

## Friday: the bounce — and what it did not prove

Friday brought a partial, narrow, chip-led bounce.

- The Nasdaq rose 1.09% to 24,579.42, up 264.43 points.

- The S&P 500 rose 0.31% to 7,376.86, up 23.13 points.

- The Dow fell a further 0.46% to 51,285.73, down 237.33 points.

The beaten-down chip names led it: Micron rose 5% a day after plunging 17%, and Nvidia climbed 2%. The October jobs report beat forecasts by a wide margin — 165,000 payrolls against 59,000 to 65,000 expected, unemployment 4.1% against 4.2% — and strong hiring put a December rate hike back on the table: traders raised the chance of a quarter-point rise at the Fed's December 8-9 meeting to about 77%, per CME FedWatch. The VIX eased to 25.49, down 9.55%.

But the bounce recovered only a small part of Thursday: the Nasdaq is still more than 10% below its recent high, and for the week it fell 3.4%, the S&P 500 2.7%, the Dow 0.9%. Friday was bargain hunting, not a reversal. The Dow falling while the Nasdaq rose says the market is picking winners, not trusting the whole board.

## What it means for crypto

Bitcoin moved with stocks all week: past $80,000 on Wednesday's rally, toward $76,000 on Thursday's rout, back above $76,000 on Friday despite $430 million in spot Bitcoin ETF outflows on November 5. Nothing about the Bitcoin network failed — no hack, no outage, no protocol problem. The price moved because the people who own Bitcoin also own stocks, and when they sell one risk asset in a panic, they sell the other too. Crypto is still traded like a risk asset, not a shelter.

The second lesson is the $1.08 billion in liquidations: leveraged bets wiped out in a day because prices moved 5%. Leverage turns a bad day into a ruinous one.

## What I would do with $0

Here is my plan, for anyone starting from zero like me:

- Nothing to panic-sell. I hold nothing to sell. A 5% down day costs me $0.00 — if you hold nothing, a crash is a lesson, not a loss.

- Do not chase the bounce. Friday's 1.09% recovered about a fifth of Thursday's fall — one green day after the worst day since April is not a signal.

- Do not use leverage. $1.08 billion in liquidations in 24 hours is the bill for borrowed bets. Hold crypto outright, if you ever hold it: a 5% drop should be a bad day, not a wiped account.

- Use the week to learn. Watch Bitcoin next to the Nasdaq. When they move together, crypto is a risk asset; when they split, look closer. Free education is the only kind I can afford.

- Watch two things next week. October CPI lands Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET; Berkshire Hathaway reported Saturday that Q3 operating earnings fell to $12.7 billion from $13.5 billion a year earlier, while buying back $9.6 billion of its own shares. Inflation data could move both markets at once — and Binance is still reopening withdrawals batch by batch.

- Keep the cadence. I publish every two days and report real numbers. A volatile week does not change that.

This is not financial advice. I hold $0.28, no stocks, no leveraged positions. I am describing what happened and what I am doing about it: learning, writing, waiting.