Wall Street’s post-election relief rally lasted exactly one day. After Wednesday’s euphoric session, Thursday brought one of the uglier trading days of the year, and anyone tracking the numbers behind buying a home in Myrtle Beach watched a market that opened nervous and closed in outright retreat. A sweeping selloff in chip and AI infrastructure stocks — triggered by growing worry that a Democratic-controlled Congress will slow the data-center buildout that’s powered much of this year’s tech rally — wiped out essentially all of Wednesday’s midterm-election bounce in a single session. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled into correction territory, closing more than 10% below its October 6 record high. Treasury yields, which had ticked up alongside Wednesday’s stock rally, eased back down as money rotated into safer assets — a quietly useful signal for anyone watching the rate side of buying a home in Myrtle Beach. Here’s what moved in the markets today, where mortgage rates stand after this week’s official update, and what today’s numbers actually mean in dollars for anyone working on buying a home in Myrtle Beach right now.
Today’s Market Snapshot
Today was a reversal, not a continuation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed near 51,523, down about 1,833 points, or roughly 3.4% — giving back nearly all of Wednesday’s 1,630-point surge in a single session. The S&P 500 fell about 335 points, or around 4.4%, to finish near 7,354, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped roughly 1,420 points, or about 5.5%, to close near 24,315. That put the Nasdaq more than 10% below its record close from early October, the technical definition of a correction. The CBOE Volatility Index, which had settled into the high teens after Wednesday’s calm, spiked back above 27, up more than 60% on the day — one of the sharper single-day jumps in the VIX this year.
The damage was heavily concentrated in chips and AI infrastructure. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped more than 12%, with Nvidia falling roughly 7% to 9%, AMD sliding nearly 15%, and Qualcomm adding to Wednesday’s weakness after missing estimates on handset chip revenue. Data-center operators and so-called “neocloud” names — CoreWeave, Nebius, Applied Digital, and IREN among them — each fell more than 12%, as investors reassessed how much political risk now surrounds the AI buildout following this week’s Democratic midterm sweep. Tesla and SpaceX both dropped roughly 9% to 11% on related regulatory concerns. Commodities told a calmer story: gold climbed toward $4,100 an ounce, up close to 1%, as some money rotated into safe havens, while oil rebounded from Wednesday’s sharp slide, with U.S. crude settling back above $90 a barrel and Brent crude near $98.
The Rate Picture for Buying a Home in Myrtle Beach: Yields Hold Steady Amid the Selloff
This is the section that matters most for anyone actively working on buying a home in Myrtle Beach, and today’s news here was reassuringly quiet compared with the chaos in stocks. The 10-year Treasury yield, which mortgage rates track most closely, eased modestly to around 4.83% today, continuing to drift lower as investors moved money into government bonds amid the equity selloff. That’s a small but welcome move for anyone hoping the rate side of the market doesn’t get swept up in today’s volatility in tech stocks.
Freddie Mac’s official weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released this morning, puts the 30-year fixed-rate average at 7.18% — down 6 basis points from last week’s 7.24%, and the lowest official weekly reading in several weeks. Same-day rate trackers, which move faster than Freddie Mac’s survey because they reflect live lender pricing rather than a weekly average, showed the 30-year fixed closer to 7.04% as of late in the week, roughly 14 basis points below today’s official figure. That gap is normal — Freddie Mac’s survey samples applications from earlier in the week, while daily trackers capture pricing in closer to real time — but both measures are pointing the same direction: modestly lower.
The year-over-year comparison remains the number that matters most for anyone wondering whether to wait out today’s rate environment. Freddie Mac’s survey from the comparable week in 2025 put the 30-year fixed at 6.22%. Even with this week’s improvement, current mortgage rates still sit nearly a full percentage point above where they stood twelve months ago — a gap that becomes far more concrete once it’s translated into an actual monthly payment.
The Real Math: What Today’s Rates Actually Mean for Your Payment
Percentages alone don’t tell a buyer much, so let’s run the numbers using the standard 30-year amortization formula on a $350,000 loan, a realistic size for a solid share of Grand Strand purchases this time of year.
At this week’s official Freddie Mac rate of 7.18%, the monthly principal and interest payment on that $350,000 loan comes to $2,371.02. That’s $14.22 less per month than last week’s official rate of 7.24%, which worked out to $2,385.24 — a modest improvement, but a real one. Today’s same-day tracker rate of 7.04% produces an even lower payment of $2,337.97 a month, about $33 less than this week’s official figure, underscoring how quickly live rate quotes have moved even before next week’s survey catches up.
The more meaningful number, though, is the year-over-year comparison. At last year’s comparable Freddie Mac rate of 6.22%, that same $350,000 loan would have cost just $2,148.19 a month. That means a buyer using this week’s official rate is paying $222.84 more every single month, or roughly $2,674 more a year, than a buyer who locked in a rate twelve months ago on an identical loan. Even using today’s more favorable live tracker rate of 7.04%, the gap is still $189.78 a month, or about $2,277 a year. Run the same comparison on a smaller $300,000 loan and the year-over-year gap narrows to about $191 a month at this week’s official rate, or roughly $163 a month using today’s tracker rate — proof that a smaller starting loan amount genuinely cushions the impact of today’s elevated-rate environment, even on a day when the stock market just posted one of its worst sessions of the year.
Why Buying a Home in Myrtle Beach Still Makes Sense After a Volatile Session
A 5.5% single-day drop in the Nasdaq, and a Nasdaq correction to go with it, can make it feel like something fundamental just shifted, but it’s worth separating a one-day rout in AI and chip stocks from what actually drives the market for buying a home in Myrtle Beach. Today’s selloff was almost entirely concentrated in semiconductor and data-center names reacting to political uncertainty around AI infrastructure spending — it had essentially nothing to do with Grand Strand home prices, local housing inventory, or the rate a lender quotes next week. The one piece of today’s action that does matter directly — the pullback in Treasury yields — was real, but it was a handful of basis points, not the kind of move that resets the broader rate environment overnight.
The more durable story for anyone focused on buying a home in Myrtle Beach remains what more than a year of elevated borrowing costs has done to this market, regardless of what Wall Street does on any given Thursday. Fewer buyers can comfortably qualify at rates still sitting in the low-to-mid 7% range, which means less competition for well-priced listings, homes sitting longer before going under contract, and sellers considerably more willing to negotiate than during the ultra-low-rate years. Price reductions, closing-cost credits, and seller-funded rate buydowns remain realistically on the table for a well-prepared buyer — leverage that doesn’t evaporate just because tech stocks had a rough afternoon.
South Carolina’s broader cost of living continues to do a lot of quiet work here as well. A statewide housing cost index built from the C2ER Cost of Living Index scores South Carolina at roughly 79.8 against a national baseline of 100 — meaningfully below average, and well below the pricier Northeast and West Coast markets many Grand Strand buyers are relocating from. The state’s effective property tax rate on an owner-occupied primary residence runs close to 0.33%, well under the 1%-plus rates common in many higher-cost states. Put together, that means the same rate move that stings a buyer in a pricier market costs less here in absolute dollars, simply because the underlying loan amounts, tax bills, and ongoing carrying costs all start from a lower baseline. Browse what’s currently available along the coast to see what today’s rates and prices translate to in real, available listings.
What a Nasdaq Correction Means for Buyers Going Forward
A violent, one-day round trip from euphoria to correction naturally raises the question of what comes next, and the honest answer is that nobody knows whether today’s selling continues or fades by tomorrow. Friday brings the October nonfarm payrolls report, which will offer fresh evidence on the labor market and likely move both stocks and Treasury yields regardless of which direction it breaks. Markets will also be watching whether today’s political worries about the AI data-center buildout translate into anything concrete at the state or federal level, or whether this proves to be a sharp but temporary repricing of an overheated trade.
None of that uncertainty changes the practical approach today: marry the house, date the rate. Buy the right home at a price today’s market supports, and refinance later if rates continue easing. Getting pre-approved now, before a specific property is even on the table, remains one of the most useful moves available in a market like this one — it replaces a confusing headline percentage with an actual rate and budget, and puts a buyer in position to move decisively the moment a motivated seller is ready to talk.
The bottom line: a brutal, AI-driven selloff that pushed the Nasdaq into correction territory, a modest but genuinely favorable pullback in Treasury yields, and a mortgage rate backdrop that eased slightly further this week even as stocks had their worst session in months. For anyone serious about buying a home in Myrtle Beach before year’s end, the negotiating leverage built up over a year of elevated rates remains squarely in the buyer’s favor, regardless of what happens to chip stocks on any single Thursday.
If you’d like help running these numbers for your own situation, connect with our team and we’ll walk through exactly what today’s rates and your specific loan amount mean for your budget, rather than leaving you to guess from a single day’s headlines.