The Dow Jones crashed 288 points on Wednesday as Nvidia’s collapse sent shockwaves across markets. The S&P 500 dropped 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite got slammed with a 2.2% loss.
The selloff came after Nvidia announced a brutal $5.5 billion quarterly charge. The company said it was tied to U.S. restrictions on sending its H20 graphics chips to China and other countries.
The update from Nvidia came in a filing where it explained the U.S. government now requires a special license for any exports of its chips to China. That announcement hit investor confidence like a truck. Nvidia tanked 6%, wiping out billions from its market cap in a matter of hours. And that wasn’t even the end of it.
The effects dragged down the entire chip sector. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) dropped nearly 4%. AMD fell more than 6%. Micron Technology lost 3%. On top of that, ASML’s U.S.-listed shares dumped more than 5% after it posted weak earnings. That pileup of bad news set fire to tech stocks.
Big tech got crushed right alongside chips. CNBC’s Magnificent Seven Index — which tracks companies like Meta, Alphabet, and Tesla — dropped more than 2%. Meta Platforms fell over 2%. Alphabet and Tesla both dropped more than 1%.
That drop came while investors tried to make sense of ongoing trade fights. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump said smartphone and PC imports would be temporarily exempt from the tariffs. He later hinted that even that exemption might be canceled soon.
This isn’t new chaos. Since Trump’s administration revived its “reciprocal” tariff push on April 2, stocks have taken a beating. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are both down around 6% since then. The Dow has lost about 5%.
Bitcoin hasn’t been spared either, as the king crypto dropped by 3% on Wednesday to $83,725, and it’s still only up around 1% for the month. Last week, Bitcoin looked like it was holding its ground compared to stocks, but that didn’t last.
