Stock futures rose premarket on Wednesday after Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress and President Donald Trump indicated he would accept the results, with healthcare and renewable energy stocks rising—but several AI-linked shares fell, while shares of GOP megadonor Elon Musk’s companies dropped.
Key Facts
Ahead of the market open, S&P 500 Futures were trading up 1.1% at 9 a.m. EDT, Nasdaq Futures up 0.3% and Dow Futures 2.3% on reduced political instability.
Renewable energy stocks rose ahead of the opening bell, with First Solar up 8% as of 9 a.m. EDT, Plug Power 12%, Sunrun 6.5% and Nextracker 5% on hope for policy shifts—Texas Senator-Elect James Talarico and Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff have both pledged to progress a number of clean energy efforts to expand clean power generation, among others.
Shares of health insurers and hospital operators rose on confirmation that Democrats took control of Congress, with Molina Healthcare up nearly 7% as of 9 a.m., Centene up 4% and HCA Healthcare up 6.5%.
Many AI-linked and data center shares fell on heightened fears of looming data center restrictions, including in Texas where governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged an immediate moratorium on data centers, with Oracle down 3.5%, CoreWeave 6% and Nvidia 1%.
Shares of Tesla and SpaceX—both run by Elon Musk, who spent nearly $450 million supporting Republicans this midterms season, and headquartered in Texas, which flipped blue—fell around 5% and 6% in premarket trading, respectively.
Trump Media & Technology Group shares also plunged 11% premarket, a day after the company inched closer towards finalizing a merger with TAE Technologies.
Forbes Valuation
Elon Musk, who dished out $216 million to America PAC, the independent-expenditure political action committee he founded in 2024, and $168 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, with donations nearing $450 million, lost an estimated $35.2 billion in the first half-hour of trading on Wednesday, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list. This brings his estimated net worth to $866.4 billion, down around 4% for the day.
Key Background
The rebound comes after stock futures fell on Tuesday night as Kalshi odds that the Democrats would take the Senate rose to above 99%, with the S&P 500 Futures trading down 1.2% at around 11 p.m. EDT, Nasdaq Futures 2% and Dow Futures 0.8%. Trump told The New York Times on Wednesday night he was “absolutely willing” to accept the election results, and the markets headed into Wednesday with less political instability.
Tangent
Analysts warned of a blue wave causing AI-linked stocks to suffer heading into Tuesday’s election. Hinojosa, who will be the first Democratic governor in Texas in more than three decades, has pledged to halt data center approvals until there’s “a legislative session that puts Texans first so that we don’t have any more communities in Texas who are powerless against these global corporations,” a highly concerning sign for major AI companies with data centers in the state. Coming at a time when these companies are already grappling with major investor concerns about massive AI infrastructure spending, massive companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia are now facing even more pressure.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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