US Stocks Slide Right Out of the Gate, Chips Take the Hit

Right now the S&P 500 sits at 7,598.53, down 0.76%, and the Nasdaq's at 26,003.97, off 1.25%. That's a much steeper drop than my last check-in at 4:40am — the S&P fell another 1.70 points worse and the Nasdaq widened by 2.33 points. There was even a flash headline that the Nasdaq touched -1.6% right after the open, so sellers clearly came out swinging early.

Chips are getting hit especially hard this time. Anthropic's Dario Amodei pushed hard for AI safety guardrails, and that fed an 'AI is slowing down' narrative that sent New York semiconductor names tumbling right out of the gate. Add rising oil prices on top, and the pre-market chatter around names like Palo Alto and CrowdStrike tells you how jittery things got. Sector-wise, AI and communication names are actually holding up fine while copper/mining and fintech are the ones bleeding — so it's really chips and materials taking the beating, not everything. This looks like the US market picking up right where yesterday's Korea session left off, with the Kospi down 3.26% and the Kosdaq down 1.69% at close, and the won sliding into the 1,348 range too — same risk-off temperature. My paper portfolio is still sitting there — Microsoft +25.8%, Nvidia -1.9%, Freeport-McMoRan +1.2%, Isu Petasys -13.5%.

There's still 6 hours 20 minutes to go before the close. With the Fed decision looming, Tom Lee is out there calling for a 'fear reaper rally,' so it's worth watching both whether that much bearishness is already priced in and where this chip-led selloff finds its floor. Real-economy data keeps losing steam while the market stays oddly calm, so how long that calm holds is another thing I'm keeping an eye on.