The Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.18% on June 5, closing at 25,709.43 in what became the index’s worst single-day performance since April 2025. The damage was concentrated in the final trading hour, when a wave of selling in semiconductor stocks turned an ugly day into a genuinely painful one.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 695.15 points, or 1.35%, finishing at 50,866.78. The S&P 500 wasn’t spared either, declining 2.64%. But the real carnage happened in chipmakers, where the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index lost more than $1 trillion in market value in a single session.
The AI trade hits a wall
Major chip names like Micron, Nvidia, and AMD saw intraday declines of 10-13% during late June trading sessions. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index registered a 7.9% drop on one occasion, signaling this wasn’t a one-day hiccup but a sustained reassessment of whether valuations had gotten ahead of themselves.
The damage wasn’t contained to US markets either. South Korea’s Kospi index fell as much as 10% in late June, dragged down by the country’s massive semiconductor sector.
