What happened?

A number of stocks fell in the afternoon session after incoming Democratic senators called for brakes on the development of artificial intelligence data centers following midterm election results. 

As reported by CNBC, the political rhetoric fueled a widespread sell-off across the chipmaking industry, where companies depend heavily on the rapid buildout of computing infrastructure. Separately, Reuters reported that Micron has paused work on a planned $4.5 billion memory-chip plant in Taiwan amid an extended labor dispute, according to a Bloomberg report cited by Reuters. The pause adds uncertainty around Micron’s capacity expansion, but the report attributed it to labor negotiations—not the debate over U.S. data center construction. 

Calls to halt or slow AI data center construction directly threaten demand projections for high-performance semiconductor components and processing units.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

• Semiconductor manufacturing company FormFactor (NASDAQ: FORM) fell 15.5%. Is now the time to buy FormFactor? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Semiconductor manufacturing company Amkor (NASDAQ: AMKR) fell 11.6%. Is now the time to buy Amkor? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Analog semiconductors company Himax (NASDAQ: HIMX) fell 24.5%. Is now the time to buy Himax? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Semiconductor manufacturing company Teradyne (NASDAQ: TER) fell 13%. Is now the time to buy Teradyne? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Processors and graphics chips company Penguin Solutions (NASDAQ: PENG) fell 19.8%. Is now the time to buy Penguin Solutions? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming in on Himax (HIMX)

Himax’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 61 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for Himax and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 24 days ago when the stock dropped 3.1% on the news that worries weighed on memory chipmakers and sparked selling pressure across the broader semiconductor sector, following news of domestic Chinese technological advancements and looming labor strikes in Taiwan. As detailed by TipRanks, Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) announced significant progress on a next-generation 4F² DRAM server-memory design due by late 2026, launching denser DDR5 enterprise server modules that directly rival architectures currently being developed by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. However, the financial research firm added that CXMT has yet to prove it can manufacture the chips in commercial volumes. 

Amplifying the negative sentiment, Reuters, via Investing.com, reported that escalating labor tension in Taiwan added direct pressure on Micron, as 1,994 Taoyuan union members—representing 99% of ballots cast—voted to authorize a strike seeking a permanent 15% profit-sharing bonus. Investing.com noted that these Taiwan sites house 15,000 workers and anchor Micron's critical DRAM and high-bandwidth memory output, though no strike date has been set. Consequently, shares of major memory manufacturers, including Micron, SanDisk, and SK Hynix, pulled back in early trade as these regional supply chain threats rattled investors. According to financial media, the widespread selling also dragged down the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SMH), which declined 1% during premarket activity.

Himax is down 11.7% since the beginning of the year, and at $7.53 per share, it is trading 68.9% below its 52-week high of $24.19 from June 2026. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Himax’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $657.82.

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