SoftBank sinks 9% as Asian chips follow Wall Street rout — SkimNews
SkimNews Take
SoftBank's outsized drop reflects its role as a leveraged proxy for the AI capex thesis, so US chip-stock moves transmit through concentrated equity exposure rather than through underlying semiconductor demand.
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- SoftBank closed 9% lower, with Tokyo Electron losing over 8% and Advantest sliding 7.2% in Japan, tracking steep overnight losses on Wall Street.
- Kioxia plunged over 16% after a Texas federal jury ordered it to pay $229 million in damages for infringing a Viasat computer memory patent.
- TSMC fell 7.29% despite a sharp jump in quarterly profit that beat expectations; the company raised its full-year capex forecast to $60–64 billion, up from $52–56 billion.
- Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech names weakened, with Tencent slipping 4.8%, Meituan down 4.6%, Kuaishou losing more than 7%, and Baidu and Alibaba easing 3.7% and 3.9%.
- The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.47% as the VanEck Semiconductor ETF dropped nearly 4%; Arm, Micron, AMD, and Broadcom each lost more than 5%, and U.S.-listed SK Hynix slumped over 13%.
- South Korea's markets were closed for a public holiday, but SK Hynix had closed over 11% lower on Thursday.
- Andrew Jackson, strategist at Ortus Advisors, said the sell-off reflected 'an unwinding of crowded AI momentum trades' rather than a deterioration in the sector's long-term fundamentals.
Why it matters: The sell-off shows the market is no longer rewarding aggressive AI capex announcements — TSMC's raised $60–64 billion spending forecast was met with a 7.29% stock drop despite an earnings beat, meaning investors now demand proof that massive infrastructure outlays translate into returns, not merely into bigger spending commitments.
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