The chip selloff lost force without reversing. Nvidia fell 1.84 percent to 217.23 dollars and the semiconductors basket fell 0.91 percent in the latest session, against falls of 3.16 percent and 4.5 percent respectively in the rout covered here yesterday. The technology sector fell 0.65 percent, Broadcom 0.55 percent, Tesla 1.29 percent, and the Nasdaq 100 was almost flat, down 0.05 percent. Microsoft rose 1.08 percent.
The weekly picture remains the story. The semiconductors basket is down 8.62 percent over one week, a derating that has run through a TSMC quarter that beat expectations and set records, covered here on October 15. Nothing in this edition’s reporting changes the demand side of that ledger: smartphone memory is scarce enough to cut global handset shipments by a fifth, Nvidia’s China volumes are falling because of controls rather than orders, and data centre leasing from Sydney to Chennai continues to clear at scale.
What the tape is pricing, on the evidence of the last two sessions, is the cost and crowding of the AI trade itself, not its order book. A selective session, in which the largest software name rises while the chip complex drifts lower, is rotation within technology rather than flight from it. The next test is earnings: whether hyperscaler capex guidance can do what TSMC’s print could not.