Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon Erase $1.1 Trillion In Monday Sell-Off: Bubble Burst Or Market Correction?

The battered tech sector continued to suffer on Monday as a global sell-off of stocks and other assets pulled markets towards bear territory.

A slight uptick in U.S. unemployment, published on Friday, reignited fears of a recession that rippled across the globe. Some indices saw historical drops, including Japan's Nikkei 225 stock index, which dropped more than 13.4% at its lowest point on Monday.

The Nasdaq Composite has been the worst affected among the main U.S. averages.

Some Saw It Coming: The correction had been anticipated by several analysts for at least a month before the downturn began. Wedbush's Daniel Ives minimized the panic, calling the sell-off "just a white knuckle moment in a multi-year bull run for tech stocks."

Ives and other pundits have argued against fears of a market bubble bursting around AI-oriented stocks.

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has said that renowned investors like Warren Buffett were "clearly expecting a correction." Tesla stock is down over 3% on Monday at the time of this writing, with the EV maker losing over 13% in the past five trading days.

On Monday, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B BRK got rid of half its stake in Apple Inc AAPL, causing the tech giant to lose almost 10% of its value after the market bell rang on Monday morning. The company quickly recovered throughout the day, and is down 5.5% on an intraday basis at the time of writing.

• Berkshire itself has also been hit by the sell-off, and is down over 5% in the last five trading days.

• At its worst point on Monday, Apple’s market cap lost $364 billion in just a few minutes when compared to its closing price on Friday. That exceeds the combined market cap of 3M Co MMM, Dow Inc DOW, DuPont de Nemours Inc DD and BASF SE BASFY.

• Amazon.com Inc AMZN has also been struck by the market panic, losing over 12% in the last five trading days. The company is down 4.1% on Monday alone. At its lowest point on Monday, Amazon's market cap was down by $171 billion when compared to Friday's closing price. That's more than Intel Corp‘s INTC entire market cap.

• Microsoft Corp MSFT is down by 7.3% in the last five trading days and 2.8% on Monday. The company’s market cap was down $172 billion at its lowest point on Monday, or three times the combined market caps of American Airlines Group Inc AAL, United Airlines Holdings Inc UAL, Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL and Southwest Airlines Co LUV.

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Nasdaq Takes The Worst Blow: The Nasdaq Composite has been the worst hit among the major indices. The average, which covers the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange, has lost about 6% of its value in the last five days.

ETFs following the 100 biggest companies in the Nasdaq have also taken a hit. Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF QQQM is down 5.3% in the last five days, following a similar trajectory of its sibling fund Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ.

Semiconductor stocks continued to lead the drop after a months-long rally that took major players to record market caps.

• Intel Corp has been one of the worst hit in the sell-off, losing more than 34% in the last five trading days, with losses of almost 6% on Monday alone. The generalized market panic was added on top of the company's worse-than-expected quarterly results last week.

• NVIDIA Corp NVDA has lost 10% of its value in the last five trading days and 6.4% on Monday alone. The company saw losses of more than 13% on Monday at the market open, quickly recovering throughout the day. Nvidia’s market cap was down by $407 billion at its lowest point on Monday, when compared to its Friday closing price. That's about half the entire government spending on Medicare for 2023.

• Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. TSM experienced a drop of over 10% at its worst point on Monday, but quickly recovered and is down 2% at the time of this writing, with losses of over 8% in the last five trading days.

• VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH, the largest ETF following the semiconductor sector, has lost 11% of its value in the last five trading days and is down 2.1% on Monday.

• iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX and SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF XSD, which also follow the chips sector, have experienced a similar trend.

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