Chip stocks are turning a rough session on Friday into a rout, with the semiconductor complex suffering its worst drop since April 2025, erasing more than $1 trillion in market value as the AI trade buckles.
The damage is heavy, but it is not evenly distributed.
A Yahoo Finance screen of semiconductor stocks shows the group wiping out about $1.2 trillion in market value Friday, with the 10 biggest decliners accounting for $923 billion of that hit.Nvidia alone is erasing nearly $280 billion in market value. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Broadcom, and Micron are each down more than $100 billion.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is sliding more than 8%, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF is tracking a similar drop. Both are on pace for their worst day since the aftermath of “Liberation Day” in April 2025, as is the broader State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is set to snap its nine-week winning streak and is down nearly 2%. But beneath the index-level drop, market internals are not flashing panic. The index has more advancers than decliners, with 257 stocks higher and 244 lower.
The Nasdaq 100, in contrast, is weaker, with 35 advancers against 65 decliners — showing that the carnage is more focused in the tech-heavy index. That split says this is not a full-market collapse. It is a concentrated unwind in the market’s hottest trade.
The pressure is showing up overseas too. The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF is down more than 11%, putting it on track for its worst day since March 2020. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dominate the fund, making EWY a live read on stress in the memory and AI supply chain.
While the market is far from panic mode, the chip trade now becomes the key. If semis don’t stabilize early next week, the selling could start to bleed into the broader tape.
Yahoo Finance, Jared Blikre
