September Nasdaq 100 E-Mini futures (NQU26) are down -1.07% this morning as investors continued to ditch chipmakers amid concerns over the sustainability of the AI spending boom.
A selloff in chip stocks broadened on Tuesday, sending South Korea’s Kospi index down more than -10% and Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average down about -4%. That followed a rough session for U.S. chip and AI infrastructure stocks, with the selloff poised to continue today as Sandisk, Micron Technology, and others slumped in pre-market trading. A blockbuster debut by Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT and a report from The Information that a Chinese state-backed company had begun mass-producing immersion deep-ultraviolet lithography machines for chipmaking fueled fears of intensifying competition. At the same time, Nvidia’s $750 billion in AI infrastructure deals renewed concerns about circular financing in the sector. All that raised further questions about whether hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI development would generate sufficient returns at a time when a massive slate of tech earnings is approaching.
