Nasdaq-100 slides into correction as global chip and memory stocks sell off

Chip stocks around the world sold off sharply Tuesday, the latest chapter in the monthslong jitters surrounding artificial intelligence, memory and chip stocks. The sell-off briefly pushed the Nasdaq-100 index into correction territory, which is a drop of 10% or more from its most recent record high. The influential index tracks the top 100 nonfinancial companies traded on the Nasdaq exchange. Shares of several chip and memory giants, including Sandisk, Western Digital, Seagate, Micron and AMD, all fell around 10% in early trading. Dell Technologies, which produces servers that use chips and memory made by those firms, tumbled 13%. Intel shares slid 7%. The selling kicked off overnight in Asia, with stocks traded on markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the primary manufacturers of memory used in AI data centers, plunged more than 15%. Kioxia, another computer storage maker, plummeted 18%. The latest wave of investor unease followed a report Monday that a Chinese state-backed firm was beginning mass production of domestic chipmaking tools. However, the report did not name the company. NBC News was not able to verify the report. Still, shares of established firms that make chip manufacturing equipment such as ASML, Canon and Nikon fell sharply on the news. Tuesday’s moves also come ahead of major earnings reports later in the week from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers. Those results could prove pivotal to the trajectory of the market. Last week, Alphabet shares plunged 7% after the company reported its results and increased its projected capital expenditures to as much as $205 billion. Most of that will go to building and expanding data centers. Evercore technology analyst Mark Mahaney said last week that Alphabet would likely set the stage for Microsoft and Amazon to do the same when they report this week. “The Capex increase increases the odds of similar behavior from AWS and Azure,” he wrote in a note Wednesday, referring to capital expenditures, or money companies spend on building physical infrastructure. Still, despite investor jitters, “cloud demand appears relentless,” he added. On Friday, JPMorgan said that artificial intelligence-related spending by companies is set to approach “about $870bn by year-end 2026.” That’s 77% higher than the same spending a year ago. So-called hyperscalers like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet represent “about $750bn of that total,” said Fabio Bassi, JPMorgan head of cross-asset strategy. Apple, which is not spending hundreds of billions of dollars building its own data centers, rallied about 1% Tuesday to a more than $5 trillion market cap for the first time. Apple has also surpassed Nvidia as the world’s largest public company. Nvidia shares were slightly higher midmorning. Beyond the rout in chip stocks, U.S. markets overall continued to power higher. In midday trading, the S&P 500 traded higher, while the Russell 2000 was only slightly lower. “Nothing seems to shake this market,” HSBC’s Max Kettner wrote in a Monday note. Part of that has to do with positive earnings results so far this quarter. “Even when excluding the blockbuster numbers from Alphabet, the average earnings surprise is well in excess of the post-COVID-19 pandemic average,” he wrote.