Exposure to China is now the biggest bogeyman on the market, and its casting its net wide, dragging down long-running market darlings that everyone thought were impervious.
The Dow lost 345 points on Tuesday, as the looming trade war started to play out in greater detail when the Trump administration started talking about a ban on Chinese investment in tech, and when China said it was working out a list of tariff targets of its own.
Markets inched further downward on Wednesday, with the Dow closing at 23,848.42, only slightly lower than Tuesday’s drop.
The NASDAQ 100 also closed lower than Tuesday, with dragging tech stocks weighing on markets.
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Among the hardest hit are semiconductor and chip makers, along with software companies whose exposure to China has investors handling them like hot potatoes.
On top of the $50-billion tariff package the Trump administration plans to slap on Chinese goods, the Treasury Department is now saying it may revive an old national security law that would effectively ban Chinese firms from investing in new technologies in the U.S.
It’s a 4-decade-old law—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act--that allows the president to declare a national emergency in the face of an "unusual and extraordinary threat." Related: Trade War Impact On Markets May Be Overblown
That would include major emerging technologies such as 5G, and our first hint of this came with the crackdown on Chinese tech giant Huawei earlier this year, followed by the killing of Singapore-based Broadcom’s $140-billion hostile takeover bid for Qualcomm in February.
3 Stocks Taking an Unexpected Hit
#1 Nvidia (NYSE:NVDA)
Nvidia has been one of the most unstoppable stocks on the tech scene for over a year, but it lost 7.8 percent on Tuesday.
NVDA's Chinese exposure represents 18.9 percent of the company's revenue.
And China isn’t its only sudden problem. Shares also took a hit because the semiconductor giant announced it would suspend testing of self-driving cars on public roads following the fatal Uber incident last week.
Tech is being challenged right now on multiple fronts, and the first cracks are showing in Nvidia, but the Monday market open saw the downward movement halt:
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#2 Micron Technology (NYSE:MU)
Micron lost 5.7 percent Tuesday, after a long-running stint as an investor favorite. Micron’s shares haven’t gained any positive momentum since its earnings report even though it beat revenue and EPS estimates for Q2. But it wasn’t enough to overcome Chine exposure fears—even for this red-hot growth stock.
The China question is the only one looming large to MU, and while stocks have taken a hit, analysts are still raising their price targets.
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Source: SeekingAlpha
MU continued it's fall on Wednesday afternoon, erasing Tuesday's brief rally.
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#3 Netflix
Netflix, whose shares are still up some 56 percent this year, lost nearly 5 percent on Wednesday.
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It’s being dragged down by the rest of the tech market, but it’s hard to blame China fears on this one. Netflix’s China exposure is minimal, but when the tech sell-offs start rolling, it gets thrown in the basket along with them.
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Many expect it to continue to slide despite Barclays’ price-target hike on the stock from $285 to $335 on Wednesday morning. It’s a major vote of confidence, but as of 10:30a.m. EST, it had already lost 4 percent on the trading day.
By Josh Owens for Safehaven.com
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