Mubasher: The benchmark indexes of Wall Street declined on Wednesday, 16 April, with blue chips dominating the declines as Nvidia “warned of steep charges from new US curbs on its chip exports to China,” according to Reuters.
This has made it one of the biggest casualties of the trade war between the US and China.
Computing giants, including Nvidia and AMD open new tab. The U.S. Commerce Department late on Tuesday issued new export licensing requirements for Nvidia's H20 and AMD's MI308 artificial-intelligence chips to China.
Tech company Nvidia said it faces $5.50 billion in charges after the restrictions, while AMD said it expects $800 million hit.
Shares of both companies slumped, with Nvidia down 5.5% and AMD shares losing 5.7%.
Other chip stocks also lost ground, with Micron Technology opens new tab down 2.5% and Broadcom ppens new tab falling 3.1%.
At 09:39 a.m. the Dow Jones Industrial Average opens new tab fell 132.38 points, or 0.33%, to 40,236.58.
The S&P 500 opens new tab lost 46.16 points, or 0.86%, to 5,350.47.
The Nasdaq Composite opens new tab lost 275.23 points, or 1.64%, to 16,547.94.
The information technology sector opens new tab fell 2.6%, while the broader semiconductor index opens new tab was down 3.3%.
The CBOE volatility index opens new tab, Wall Street's "fear gauge," ticked up 0.58 points to 30.70 after falling for the last three sessions.
"It's going to create a lot of uncertainty for companies in terms of (the) decisions they make," Reuters cited Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer at Northlight Asset Management.
Zaccarelli added: "I would expect investors to be slightly less willing to buy stocks of chipmakers, technology companies and things like that until they have a more clear picture as to what the final rules of the road will be."
United Airlines opens new tab gained 2.5% after the company reported stable bookings despite forecasting lower profit for the current quarter.
Tesla opens new tab fell 1.5% after Reuters reported that Trump's tariffs on Chinese parts had disrupted the EV-maker's production plans.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.17-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 1.54-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and one new low, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded six new highs and 41 new lows.
