Market Commentary - Foreign Markets
17-Apr-2025 09:26
Wall Street Suffers Broad Sell-Off Amid Chip Stock Rout and Fed Caution
Nvidia shares plunged 6.9% after the company revealed it expects up to $5.5 billion in charges related to its H20 chips. The drop followed new U.S. export restrictions requiring licenses to sell its GPUs to China and other nations.
ASML shares dropped 7.1% after the chipmaker warned of growing uncertainty in its 2025'2026 outlook due to U.S. tariffs. Markets fell further after Fed Chair Jerome Powell echoed earlier remarks, stressing caution amid tariff-related uncertainty.
Traders mostly ignored a batch of U.S. economic data, including a Commerce Department report showing retail sales jumped 1.4% in March, following a 0.2% rise in February. Excluding autos, sales rose 0.5% after a 0.7% gain the prior month. Meanwhile, industrial production slipped 0.3% in March, driven by a sharp decline in utilities output.
Semiconductor stocks sank sharply, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunging 4.1% amid steep losses in Nvidia and ASML. Software and brokerage stocks also tumbled, dragging the Dow Jones U.S. Software Index down 3.1% and the NYSE Arca Broker/Dealer Index down 2.3%. Transportation, networking, and retail stocks were weak as well, while gold stocks defied the trend, rallying on record-high gold prices.
Asia-Pacific stocks moved mostly lower. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index slumped by 1.0%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index tumbled by 1.9%. the major European markets turned mixed performance while the French CAC 40 Index edged down by 0.1%, the German DAX Index and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index both rose by 0.3%.
In the bond market, treasuries moved to the upside as the day progressed after initially showing a lack of direction. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, fell 4.4 bps to 4.27%.
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