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Today, U.S. tech stocks are down. Nvidia, the behemoth of American AI, shed something like 3%. Amazon and Meta each ticked down slightly. And the S&P 500, as I see it, lost about $100 – so, 1,25%?
The slump is not limited to the U.S. Korean firms like SK Hynix and Samsung are down, too, as well as some European giants. But the real news stateside is how much the big tech companies influence the overall market. Analysts who are counting the beans know that the big seven tech companies publicly traded on U.S. exchanges, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta, and Nvidia, constitute a whopping 32% of the total stock market. So it’s no wonder the S&P feels the sting of the tech downturn, although some experts remain stalwart.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near some type of catastrophic failure in the markets,” Tom Hulick, the CEO of a firm called Strategy Asset Managers, said, according to CNBC coverage of the current market. “There’s too much liquidity out there, and the earnings momentum is very strong right now. AI is going to continue to grow earnings for companies in the years to come.”
Others, though, are nervous.
“For investors navigating this volatility, the critical question is whether this pullback represents a strategic entry point or the beginning of a more protracted downturn,” writes Jason Huang at Intellectia, also referencing a prior drop earlier in the month, where Broadcom’s woes rippled through the market. “Historical patterns suggest that corrections in secular growth trends often create attractive buying opportunities for patient investors with appropriate time horizons.”
Money in Space
And then there’s Elon Musk’s contribution. Well, not just his, but the impact of the SpaceX company and everyone involved.
First, SpaceX is now publicly traded as SPCX, and although I had a surprisingly hard time pulling up a detailed chart of the stock’s movements between June 12 and June 23, I eventually found that after debuting around $160 per share, the stock surged up over $200 before settling back down right around that IPO mark.
It’s likely that this SPCX value will have its own impact on the broader U.S. market. Will it be a buffer for the other seven equities? Time will tell.
Chip Makers Under Pressure
Big chip makers are especially vulnerable to this downswing.
“The moves are a stark contrast from what investors have seen in the chip sector over the last several months,” writes Jennifer Sor at Market Insider.
This takes place in the context of a global market where TSMC, in Taiwan, has a dominant position in fab, and the U.S. is trying to court its presence stateside, in addition to growing domestic efforts by American companies like Intel. I’ve written a lot in the past, about how TSMC’s stranglehold has been challenging for customers who have to take a back seat to Nvidia, in the chip pipeline.
In any case, chip stocks are down, too, and investors are eying Intel and others with a certain suspicion, at least short-term.
The AI Bubble?
In some quarters, people have been talking about an AI bubble for a long time.
Writers like Kyle Morel at Northjersey.com suggest that the entire current downturn is due to, in that reporter’s words, “concerns over long-term valuations of artificial intelligence.”
That might be an overstatement, or it might not. We might be in a bit of an AI bubble, although proponents have strong cases for the overall utility of the technology. We’re only beginning to see that, to quote Dylan, “the times, they are a-changin.”
Stay tuned.