On April 19th local time, the three major indexes of the US stock market diverged, with the S&P index falling 0.88%, the Dow Jones index rising 0.56%, and the Nasdaq index falling 2.05%. The S&P index closed at 4967.23 points, falling below 5000 points. The Nasdaq index, mainly composed of technology stocks, has fallen for six consecutive trading days, falling 5.52% this week, marking the worst weekly performance since November 2022.
Popular technology stocks generally fell, many of which were AI concept stocks. Among the seven major technology giants, Nvidia fell 10%, its stock price hit a new low in nearly two months, its market value fell below $2 trillion, and its market value evaporated by $211.7 billion. Tesla fell 1.92% to close at $147.05 per share, with its stock price falling for six consecutive trading days, reaching a new low since January last year. In addition, Apple fell by 1.22%, Microsoft fell by 1.27%, Alphabet fell by 1.23%, Amazon fell by 2.56%, Meta fell by 4.13%, and the seven tech giants evaporated a market value of approximately $400 billion.
Several other technology stocks also fell. AMD fell 5.44% on Friday, evaporating its market value by $13.6 billion, and its stock price hit a new low in nearly three months. Microelectronics fell 23.14%, ARM fell 16.9%, Micron Technology fell 4.61%, Asma fell 3.32%, Netflix fell 9.09%, and Broadcom fell 4.31%. AI concept stocks SoundHound.ai, BigBear. ai, Palantir, and Oracle fell 7.31%, 5.23%, 3.12%, and 0.97%, respectively.
According to EPFR Global, a data provider that tracks fund flows, investors withdrew approximately $21 billion from funds investing in the US stock market in the two weeks ending Wednesday. Possible disturbances to the stock market include concerns that inflation may lead to the Federal Reserve maintaining high interest rates, as well as geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East.
"The market is working hard to digest many counter currents, and the inflation problem is more severe than the market thinks, even more severe than the Federal Reserve expected," said Bill Northey, Investment Director of United States Bank Wealth Management
On April 18th, Netflix released its quarterly report with a revenue of $9.37 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14.8%, a net profit of $2.332 billion, and a year-on-year increase of 16% in the total number of paid members. Although the performance exceeded market expectations, Netflix reminded that seasonal factors will lead to a lower user growth in the second quarter than in the first quarter, and stated that it will stop disclosing data on paid member growth rates and other data from the first quarter of 2025.
Microelectronics announced in a press release on Friday that the company will release its third quarter results on April 30th. Unlike in the past, this time AMD did not provide preliminary performance in advance.
Tesla announced on April 15th that it will lay off over 10% of its global employees. Tesla CEO stated in an internal email to employees that they will lay off employees to reduce costs and improve productivity. This layoff has affected over 14000 employees. Market analysts believe that layoffs indicate that Tesla may face difficult times.
TSMC President Wei Zhejia stated at a recent online corporate briefing that the growth rate of the semiconductor industry, excluding memory, for the whole year of 2024 will be lowered to 10%, and the growth rate of the foundry industry will be lowered to 14%~19%. These two data were previously expected to exceed 10% and about 20%, respectively. In addition, the demand for traditional servers is lukewarm, the demand for mature process nodes is still sluggish, and the estimation of chips in the automotive field has shifted from "growth" in the previous quarter to "decline".
Lithography machine manufacturer Asma recently released its first quarter financial report, which showed a net sales of 5.3 billion euros, a 27% decrease compared to the previous quarter, and a net profit of 1.2 billion euros, a 40% decrease compared to the previous quarter. The gross profit margin was 51.0%, compared to 51.4% in the previous quarter. Asma revealed that the new order amount for the first quarter of this year was 3.6 billion euros, of which 656 million euros were EUV lithography machine orders (5.6 billion euros in the previous quarter). Its new orders were lower than the market's expected 5.1 billion euros.