November sell-off erases the year's gains
The November 5, 2026 session alone cut nearly $450 billion from Nvidia's market capitalization. Shares finished at $181.60, down more than 9%, leaving the company valued at about $4.4 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance. Nvidia had not suffered a worse trading day since the January 2025 DeepSeek sell-off.
That closing price erased Nvidia's gains for 2026: the stock had ended December 31, 2025 at $186.50, StockTitan reported. It was also about 24% below its record close on October 6, 2026, according to Yahoo Finance.
The losses extended across the market on November 5. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52%, putting it more than 10% below its October record and confirming a technical correction. The S&P 500 declined 4.36%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 1,833 points, or 3.44%.
Texas puts data center plans in focus
Texas is a major focus of the regulatory concerns. Gina Hinojosa won the November 3, 2026 gubernatorial election, becoming the state's first Democratic governor-elect in more than three decades. She repeatedly sought an immediate moratorium on data center development during her campaign and takes office in January 2027, Insurance Journal reported.
The state represents nearly 30% of US data center capacity scheduled to come online in 2028, more than any other state, according to SemiAnalysis. GLJ Research's Gordon Johnson estimates that Hinojosa's victory immediately exposes roughly 13 gigawatts of planned data center capacity to risk, an amount sufficient to power about 10 million homes.
Restrictions predate the election. Republican Governor Greg Abbott directed an audit on August 3, 2026 covering every data center awaiting a connection to the Texas grid. On September 21, he ordered the state environmental agency to stop issuing all permits sought by data centers until the audit is complete, according to StockTitan.
The potential exposure reaches beyond Texas. Insurance Journal reported that Hinojosa's election, alongside Democratic gubernatorial victories from Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania, could subject half of proposed US AI data center additions to tougher local scrutiny and opposition.
For Nvidia, the post-election concern centers on slower US construction rather than China, Yahoo Finance reported. Customers headquartered in the US generated 69.3% of its revenue in the year ended January 2026, while the company's guidance already excludes China data-center compute revenue.
Earnings forecasts underpin the valuation case
Despite the regulatory uncertainty and weakness in the stock, Ariva reported that experts regard Nvidia as substantially undervalued on strong growth and profit forecasts. Figures reported by Yahoo Finance show that on November 2, 2026, the shares traded at about 17 times forward earnings. That was their lowest multiple in five years and less than half the five-year average of 36 times.
Analysts expected normalized earnings per share to increase from $9.31 in fiscal 2027 to $21.34 two years later. Those forecasts underpin the valuation argument, even as investors weigh the risk to data center development.
Nvidia is scheduled to release its next quarterly results on November 17, 2026. Management's revenue guidance for the October quarter is about $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, and it says supply constraints limit growth through January 2028.
