On Friday, the Nasdaq had its worst session in a year. By Monday it all seemed like a bad dream.
The chipmakers that had their worst session since 2020 on Friday (Micron, Broadcom) were Monday’s best performers, up 6.5% by midday. Wall Street appears to consider Friday as a welcome easing off of a record-setting rally, as opposed to a genuine repricing of the AI trade that other analysts warned of.
New York’s bad dream was, overnight, Asia’s waking one. South Korea’s KOSPI—the best-performing major index in the world this year—plunged as much as 8.8% at the open Monday, triggering a 20-minute trading halt, its third of 2026, and closed down 8.29%.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix—the two memory-chip makers that together make up roughly half of the index—fell about 10% and 8%, respectively; the won opened at a 17-year low against the dollar. Japan’s Nikkei lost 3.9%, China’s CSI 300 2.1%.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang also called Friday’s selloff a buying opportunity, telling investors demand for AI chips keeps outrunning supply. It echoed the case he made at Nvidia’s GTC conference in March, when he projected $1 trillion in combined sales for the company’s Blackwell and next-generation Vera Rubin chips through 2027—double an earlier forecast—and called demand “off the charts.” It appears like the markets listened to him.
