It’s getting ugly.
The Nasdaq opened 1% higher but it’s been a nosedive since and it’s now down nearly 2% and at the lowest levels since in a month.
There has been no clear trigger for the reversal but one of the reasons for the rally was dubious. Trump and administration officials once again said a deal with Iran was close or imminent. CNN earlier pointed out that Trump himself has said a deal is close 37 specific times since the war started, so the act is wearing thin.
The real driver of the selling is the inverse of what caused the incredible rally in April: Technology and AI.
There are a few things worth noting:
1) The SpaceX IPO
Friday is the big day and the latest report is that the deal for 5% of the company is multiple times oversubscribed. How it performs on Day 1 and in the following week will be critical. The problem is the market sees the wave of issuance from this, Anthropic and OpenAI’s announcement of an IPO yesterday as too much supply to easily absorb. It’s not only the IPO numbers but the trickle of selling that will come after as lockups expire.
2) They’re not the only ones raising money
Google last week raised capital via a secondary equity issuance and that was a big surprise for the market. The fear is that debt markets and private capital are running dry in the massive capex buildout that’s going to last a number of years. There are now rumors that Meta is thinking about raising cash via equity as well and all this spending doesn’t have any guaranteed economic returns for all the biggest names in the world.
3) Chips are cyclical
Memory chips in particular have a long history of booms and busts. They’re like a commodity in that prices go up, companies build factories and then prices collapse. Right now, the memory names are trading at relatively low multiples but those depend on prices holding up for a number of years (or indefinitely). The long history of that industry shows that’s not a wise bet.
4) One little crack in the narrative
One story that’s gotten some attention today is that data center builder Crusoe paused a project in Wyoming. It’s a 1.8 GW project and the company highlighted 5 GW under contract. “At the request of our customer, Crusoe has paused its development activities” on the site, the company said Tuesday in a statement. The question is: Who is the customer? They work with OpenAI, Oracle, Google and Microsoft on other projects. One name strongly suspected is OpenAI based on company comments and the structure of the deal (likely with Oracle) but it could also be Meta. If even one hyperscaler cuts back on spending, it could undercut the Nasdaq chip-driven narrative.
In terms of names, some of the losers today:
- MRVL -9.0%
- QCOM -6.6%
- MU -4.0%
- INTC -3.6%
- TSLA -3.4%
- ADBE -3.4%
- CSCO -3.4%
- AAPL -3.2%
- WDC -2.8%
Virtually all of these names opened higher today and all of them (except Adobe) have had huge runs since late March. There’s an element of profit taking in all this but the moves are violent all the same.
