Nvidia $279 billion wipeout, drags down global chip stocks.

Global semiconductor and associated stocks fell on Wednesday, following a steep plunge in Nvidia’s share price in the U.S. overnight. In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 9% in regular trading, leading semiconductor stocks lower amid a sell-off on Wall Street. Economic data published Tuesday resurfaced jitters about the health of the U.S. economy. Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 2%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation. Around $279 billion of value was wiped off of Nvidia on Tuesday, in the biggest one-day market capitalization drop for a U.S. stock in history. The previous record was held by Facebook-parent Meta, which suffered a $232 billion fall in value in a day in February 2022. Nvidia’s value chain extends to South Korea, namely, memory chip maker SK Hynix and conglomerate Samsung Electronics. Samsung shares closed 3.45% lower, while SK Hynix, which provides high bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia, slid 8%. Tokyo Electron dropped 8.5%, while semiconductor testing equipment supplier Advantest shed nearly 8%. Japanese investment holding company SoftBank Group , which owns a stake in chip designer Arm , fell 7.7%. Contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company declined more than 5%. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units which power large language models — machine learning programs that can recognize and generate text. The selling in Asia filtered through to European semiconductor stocks. Shares of ASML, which makes critical equipment to manufacture advanced chips, fell 5% in early trade. Other European names such as ASMI, Be Semiconductor and Infineon, were all lower.