Wall Street shifted abruptly to aggressive selling on Thursday after a brief post-election rally, driven mainly by investors reassessing the outlook for artificial intelligence infrastructure spending and concerns over the policy direction once Democrats took control of the U.S. Congress.

Amid the turmoil that erased roughly $3 trillion in combined market value from S&P 500 constituents, market opinion split sharply: economist Peter Schiff warned of further declines, while investor Gary Black viewed it as a prime opportunity to buy tech stocks that had sold off heavily.

Peter Schiff holds an extremely pessimistic view of current market sentiment, arguing that Wednesday's rally after Democrats' sweeping midterm election victory was abnormal and that Thursday's sell-off was the logical outcome.

Schiff pointed out that a fundamental shift in the political landscape would lead to a series of negative economic consequences, including lower economic productivity, a larger government, a bigger budget deficit, and heavier regulation.

He predicted that tax rates, inflation, and interest rates would all rise, and that these factors combined would place sustained pressure on the U.S. economy and stock market.

Schiff blamed the political reversal on Republicans and Fox News, criticized Donald Trump's administration for failing to break free from policies that led to recession, and warned that democratic socialist policies could worsen these problems.

He emphasized: "There will be many more days like today," suggesting the current decline is only the beginning.

In stark contrast to Schiff's panic, Future Fund managing partner Gary Black believes the market had already priced in a Democratic victory.

He said on X that after a "blue wave" in the midterm elections, a market pullback to reasonable levels was expected by most people.

Black cited data showing that contracts on prediction market platform Kalshi had indicated a 71% probability of Democrats winning control of both chambers of Congress, suggesting the outcome was not a surprise.

Based on this, he recommended buying large-cap tech stocks that were sold off due to excessively high 2026 capital expenditure guidance, including Alphabet (GOOG.US), Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Meta (META.US) (formerly Facebook), and Amazon (AMZN.US).

By his figures, Alphabet trades at about 28 times 2026 earnings with 20% long-term EPS growth, while Meta trades at about 22 times with 18% growth, giving PEG ratios of 1.4 and 1.2, respectively, making valuations reasonable relative to expected growth and offering a good entry opportunity.

Woofun AI data shows Thursday's sell-off was broad, with the Nasdaq Composite posting its largest single-day drop since April 2025; the Nasdaq 100 and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had their worst single-day performance since March 2020.

State Street's SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) fell 4.41% on Thursday to $733; in after-hours trading it rose 0.25% to $734.81.

Invesco's QQQ ETF (NASDAQ: QQQ) fell 6.49% on Thursday to $647.05; in after-hours trading it rose 0.83% to $652.43.

The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE: XLK) dropped 8%, while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SMH) fell 11.21%.

Among individual stocks, NVIDIA (NVDA.US) fell 9.26%, AMD (AMD.US) plunged 17.26%, and Micron Technology (MU.US) dropped 17.46%.

Elon Musk's Tesla (TSLA.US) and SpaceX (SPCX.US) fell 10.77% and 9.05%, respectively.

However, overnight markets showed signs of a rebound, with NVIDIA up 1.24%, AMD up 3.37%, Micron up 4.11%, Tesla up 0.58%, and SpaceX up 2.49%.

This sharp market volatility reflects the profound impact of political uncertainty on asset pricing.

Although short-term panic wiped out enormous market value, some investors have begun looking for opportunities from a valuation perspective.

As policy expectations gradually become clearer, whether the market can stabilize will depend on how subsequent economic data validate inflation and interest rate trends.

This is the second major stress test for tech stocks after the 2020 pandemic shock, and its outcome will reshape the market landscape for some time to come.