The backdrop to Wall Street's worst day in almost a month, which saw both the S&P500 and Nasdaq shed more than 1%, was a surprisingly positive showing for Democrats in local mayoral and state governor elections and today's start to the Supreme Court hearings on the legality of President Donald Trump's tariffs.
But neither was directly responsible for the wobble in the market that was unnerved by predictions of an inevitable correction and an earnings-day flub from AI and defense outlier Palantir - a stock that's doubled again this year in the tech frenzy and is trading about 230 times forward earnings.
"Big Short" investor Michael Burry, known for his successful bets against the U.S. housing market in 2008, has now placed bearish bets on Nvidia and Palantir, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.
Much like Palantir's 8% swoon the previous night, Advanced Micro Devices - whose stock price has also doubled this year - seemed to deliver a decent set of results after Tuesday's bell but the market reaction saw its shares drop 3% out of hours.
Another AI darling, Super Micro Computer, was less of a puzzle as its shares plunged 9% on profit and revenue misses.
Qualcomm tops the earnings diary later, with Costco eyed for an update on retail activity.
And there has been no bounce in U.S. stock index futures overnight, with tech-heavy bourses in Japan and South Korea both losing more than 2% each on Wednesday and European indexes down about 0.5% earlier.
Eyes will be on ADP's take on U.S. private sector payrolls for last month later on Wednesday to give a reality check on some hesitation among Federal Reserve officials about further policy easing.
U.S. Treasury yields have clawed back overnight declines ahead of that release, a rare glimpse of the jobs market in the data outage that's accompanying what's now the longest government shutdown on record. Tentative moves to end the hiatus this week saw no breakthrough.
The dollar index kept nudging higher, hitting its best level since May. The Korean won hit its lowest in seven months as the KOSPI stock index logged its worst day since August 1, even though it recouped some of its worst losses of more than 5% at one point.
Caught up in the wave of risk aversion and tech selling, Bitcoin plunged too and struggled to regain a toehold above $100,000 on Wednesday after dipping below that level briefly for the first time since June.
Elsewhere, China stocks outperformed as the Chinese government issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically-made artificial intelligence chips.
Sterling recovered some ground after the UK finance minister Rachel Reeves on Tuesday flagged likely tax rises later this month - something that's buoyed bets on another Bank of England interest rate cut as soon as Thursday.
The euro was on the back foot despite European business surveys showing the fastest expansion of the region's economy in October in more than two years.
The latest U.S. election results, meantime, leave some investors mulling next year's more impactful midterm congressional poll. While betting markets such as Polymarket still see a Democrat House majority and a Republican Senate as the most likely outcome in a year's time, the chances of a Democrat sweep of both chambers jumped 10 points to 35% overnight.
