Intel has already plunged by 63% from its June high, SanDisk by 66%, Micron by 47%.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

This time, Qualcomm did it. There’s now always someone that did it. Yesterday, as part of the blue tsunami election rally, dip buyers got suckered back in. Then afterhours, Qualcomm came along and set them straight again.

It reported earnings; they topped estimates, but the forecast was lumpy, dogged by supply issues due to the strains from the data center buildout, and other issues, and its shares cratered afterhours yesterday, and by 9.5% today and are down by 39% from their high in June, repeating the trend that other tech stocks had set with their earnings calls.

Today, the day the Nasdaq Composite dropped by 5.5%, the S&P 500 Index by 4.4%, and the DOW by 3.4%, the PHLX Semiconductor Index [SOX] plunged by 12.2%, the worst percentage-drop since the March 2020 crash, and is now down by 38% from the June high. For an index, that’s no longer a nothingburger, but a full-fledged luxo-burger with extra blue cheese.

Where are the AI agents buying the dips when you need them? Here is a selection of the bloodletting in semiconductor stocks, the plunges today, and the plunges from their respective highs:

• SanDisk -22.3% today, -66% from June high.
• Intel: -10.3% today, -63% from June high.
• AMD: -17.3% today, -38% from October high.
• Micron: -17.4% today, -47% from June high.
• Broadcom: -10.4% today, -41% from June high.
• Qualcomm: -9.5% today, -39% from its June high.
• Nvidia: -9.3% today, -25% from October high.

With that kind of plunge in semis today, there might be a bounce tomorrow. There better be. Because this is pretty ugly. Dip buying is still a thing. And there was a sense of temporary capitulation today.

Nvidia, now at $181.60, has fallen below its year-ago price ($195.21). Since its peak in October, it has given up $1.4 trillion in market cap. Easy come, easy go. Trillions are flying by so fast on the way up and on the way down that they’re hard to count. CNBC’s Cramer came out hyping Nvidia today. That’s a scary thought.

Intel is back where it had been five years ago. In less than three months, it had spiked by 230%, from $43 on March 27 to $142 on June 12. Its 63% drop since then has wiped out most of that 230% gain. It’s also back where it had first been in early 2000.

SanDisk had spiked by 200% from April 8 ($781) through the high on June 25 ($2,354). The 66% plunge since then, to $806 today, has wiped out most of that 200% gain. But compared to where the stock had been two years ago, it’s still up by 237%

Semiconductor stock after semiconductor stock went through these gigantic movements at huge market caps (these are not small stocks), on the way up, and now on the way down.

For the not-so-faint-of heart chasing extra chills, there are leveraged semiconductor ETFs, such as the 3x leveraged Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF [SOXL], which collapsed by 38.7% today and by 86% from its high in June. Leveraged ETFs are day-trader instruments, not investments. But it fits right in, gambling mentality has completely taken over this market some time ago.

A few days ago, I remarked how edgy the stock market had become, with individual stocks plunging by the double digits on some untoward comments in the earnings call or whatever, such as Intel getting sacked by 23% in afterhours trading that day, and a lot more  during regular hours the next day, and a lot more since then. Intel has crushed the dip buyers time and again so far. That’s a scary thing. It had already done that during the Dotcom Bust, and now its chart is staring to look similar.

But dip buyers need to show up in large numbers to put a stop to this. Maybe tomorrow it’ll work? Either dip buyers, or AI agents, or somebody.

In the Musk Department: Tesla plunged 10.8% today to $343.69, and is down by 25% from a year ago, and by 31% from its all-time high in December 2025. SpaceX plunged by 9.0% today to $123.62, and is down by 45% from its high right after the IPO.

In the AI data center department, CoreWeave plunged by 9.8% today and is down by 68% from the high in May.

The Cboe Volatility Index [VIX] was at a tranquil 16.9 yesterday afternoon, and today spiked to 28.2. It doesn’t predict anything, it reacts. But for some, this kind of spike is a buying signal. But it can spike to 50 without breaking a sweat when things get ugly.

The Nasdaq Composite, despite the dramatic moves of individual stocks, is down by only 12% from its all-time high, and is still up by 5.5% from a year ago and by 4.6% year-to-date. The S&P 500 is still within spitting distance from its all-time high, down by just 6.3%. And year-over-year, it’s still up by 9.4%. But the AI trade has gotten banged up pretty seriously.

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