Nvidia drops 4.3% as tech selloff drags Nasdaq down 1.7%
Nvidia fell 4.3% on Friday, pulling the Nasdaq Composite down 441.78 points, or 1.74%, to 24,923.79 as a fresh selloff in technology and semiconductor shares hit Wall Street.
The Philadelphia semiconductor index dropped 6%, with Advanced Micro Devices down 10% and Broadcom down 7%. Neoclouds CoreWeave and Nebius each shed 10%, while data-centre firms IREN, Applied Digital and Core Scientific declined between 3% and 9%. Nvidia's shares were on track for their longest streak of weekly losses since October 2012.
The move follows the resignation of Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang on Thursday, after scrutiny of his relationship with a businesswoman suspected by the US of spying for Beijing. The turmoil has raised questions about the AI trade, given Nvidia's central role in the industry's boom and its financial ties to several companies in the sector.
At 11:23 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 122.12 points, or 0.23%, at 52,174.97, and the S&P 500 had lost 76.88 points, or 1.01%, to 7,515.49. Apple and Meta were the only Magnificent Seven gainers, each up less than 1%, while Microsoft slipped 0.4% after an outage of Outlook and Teams lasting more than 12 hours.
October producer prices for final demand were slightly softer than expected but still up 6.5% year on year, the largest annual gain since November 2022. "That's definitely not good, especially on the heels of a rotten CPI number earlier this week. It shows that inflation continues to be a problem," said Jon Zetlmaier, founder of Zetlmaier Wealth Management. The losses leave equities exposed heading into Anthropic's IPO next week. "Something that will be interesting to see is if all the supply of new equity is going to be absorbed in a way that doesn't result in selling other AI stocks to kind of fund that," said Angelo Kourkafas, senior global investment strategist at Edward Jones.
What it means for Pakistan: The selloff matters for Pakistani investors with exposure to US technology and AI shares, whether directly or through mutual funds and robo-advisory portfolios that track the Nasdaq and S&P 500. A weaker appetite for AI stocks can also cool valuations for regional technology listings and for crypto assets, which have traded in step with risk assets. Any sustained pullback would be felt in rupee terms too, since a stronger dollar against the rupee magnifies losses on foreign holdings for Pakistan-based savers.
