And although Meta rallied on Thursday, poor results from Qualcomm and Arm saw their shares and many of the big chipmakers swoon once again.
Intel dropped about 20% overnight on its miss, dividend suspension and job cuts in what would be its worst day since the 2000 dot.com bubble burst. Taiwan chip giant TSMC lost almost 6%.
After a 7% loss on Thursday, and a wildly volatile week, AI darling Nvidia lost another 2% out of hours on Friday following media reports that the U.S. government is launching an antitrust probe into the company following complaints from rival chipmakers.
Another bruising day on Thursday for the S&P500 <.SPX>, Nasdaq <.IXIC> and Russell 2000 small caps <.RUT> ripped around the world overnight.
Irked additionally by the week’s Bank of Japan rate rise and yen surge, the Nikkei plunged almost 6% in its worst day since the pandemic hit in 2020.
China, at the heart of the brewing global industrial slowdown after news that its factory sector contracted again in July, saw its stocks drop more than 1%. European stocks were also off about 1%.
With bond yields racing to their lowest since the feverish Fed easing speculation of early 2024, even Japanese 10-year yields fell back below 1% for the first time in over a month despite the week’s BOJ move. The yen held steady at just under 150 per dollar.
But in all the stock and bond ructions, currency markets were generally much steadier. The dollar index was only slightly lower, with the Swiss franc outperforming amid all the angst and hitting its strongest since February.
The political backdrop this month is another big consideration for U.S. markets.
Whatever is driving trading patterns, it’s no longer the so-called ‘Trump trade’.
After a wave of opinion polls showing enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House, betting markets now put her chances of winning as higher than that of Republican challenger Donald Trump for the first time.
