Remember those nervous days last October and November when everyone was whispering about an AI bubble? Well, Wednesday felt like déjà vu all over again, as investors rushed for the exits in tech and AI-linked stocks with the kind of urgency that suggests panic was setting in.
By midday in New York, the Nasdaq 100 had slid 1.3%, but the real carnage was in semiconductors. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) sank nearly 3%, marking its fourth straight day of losses. When you zoom out, chipmakers have now fallen 9% over just four trading sessions. That's their worst stretch since April, when tariff fears sent the sector spiraling.
The poster child for AI dominance, Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), wasn't spared. The chip giant dropped more than 4% in what turned out to be its steepest single-day decline in two months. Perhaps more concerning for bulls, Nvidia sank to its lowest level since mid-September, a three-month low that has traders wondering if the relentless AI rally has finally hit a wall.
But the pain wasn't limited to chipmakers. Companies that rode the AI infrastructure wave got hit even harder. GE Vernova Inc. (GEV) and Constellation Energy Inc. (CEG) both slid over 7% as investors unwound their bets on the power generation and AI-adjacent names that had been darlings of the AI boom.
CoreWeave Inc. (CRWV), the cloud computing company that's been racing to meet surging AI demand, fell for a sixth consecutive session. It tumbled more than 6% to hit its lowest level since mid-May. The concerns here are practical and straightforward: when your order backlog is overflowing but you're bumping up against capacity constraints, investors start to worry about whether you can actually deliver on all those promises.
Oracle Corp. (ORCL) continued its brutal descent, sliding another 5% and extending its drawdown from October's all-time highs to nearly 50%. That's a full-blown bear market and then some.
Even Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), which has been the standout performer among the Magnificent Seven this year, couldn't escape the selling pressure. The search giant dropped more than 2.3% and was heading for a fifth consecutive session in the red.
Outside of equities, the action was fascinating. Silver continued its absolutely relentless rally, surging more than 4% to $66.50 an ounce. That pushes its year-to-date gain to an eye-popping 130%, the kind of move that makes you wonder what exactly everyone knows about silver that you don't. Gold wasn't far behind, rising 0.7% to $4,330 and inching closer to retesting its October record high near $4,350.
Oil prices tried to stage a comeback, climbing 1% to $56 after hitting their lowest levels in nearly five years on Tuesday. It's the kind of bounce you'd expect after such a sharp selloff, though whether it has legs is another question entirely.
Over in crypto, risk appetite remained fragile. Bitcoin (BTC) slipped 1.2%, suggesting that when tech sells off, digital assets aren't offering much of a safe haven either.
