US equity markets closed in the red on Thursday, with the S&P 500 slipping 0.3% and the NASDAQ Composite falling 1.1%. The culprit: a brutal selloff in semiconductor and AI stocks that erased nearly $1 trillion in market value from chip names alone.
For crypto investors, the pain didn’t stay confined to Wall Street. Bitcoin fell in tandem with equities, a reminder that the “digital gold” narrative still takes a back seat to correlation math when tech stocks are getting hammered.
A strong jobs report, paradoxically, broke things
A robust US jobs report landed Thursday morning, and instead of cheering, traders started selling. Strong employment data means the Federal Reserve has less reason to cut interest rates, which is bad news for high-growth tech stocks whose lofty valuations depend on cheap money flowing freely. Profit-taking kicked in almost immediately across semiconductor and AI names. The NASDAQ’s intraday losses actually reached around 4% at their worst before recovering somewhat into the close. The S&P 500, more diversified and less tech-heavy, absorbed the blow with a comparatively modest 0.3% decline.
Broadcom was a notable casualty. The chipmaker’s shares dropped sharply after the company released weak guidance for the third quarter, adding fuel to an already nervous market.
