Asia’s Chip Stocks Crashed Overnight, With SK Hynix Down 11.7% And Taiwan Off More Than 8%. Now Nasdaq Futures Are Pointing Higher
TSMC shares tanked in Taipei but are climbing in New York before the bell. The gap exposes who actually took the hit from Thursday's rout, and which AI-linked stocks may still be in trouble when U.S. trading opens.
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SK Hynix supplies the memory that sits on the world’s top AI chips, and it lost more than a tenth of its value before most Americans woke up. The stock fell 11.7% in Seoul on Friday, Fox Business reported, citing Reuters. In the same Fox Business report, Samsung Electronics fell nearly 10%, SoftBank Group sank about 11% and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM | TSM Price Prediction) dropped 8.5% in Taipei. These figures are approximate and may differ from official closes.
Asia’s main indexes fell almost as hard. Fox Business said South Korea’s KOSPI plunged more than 8%, which triggered a temporary trading halt, and was still down about 7% after trading resumed. Fox Business also said Taiwan’s benchmark dropped more than 8% and Japan’s Nikkei fell roughly 6%, putting it on track for its worst day in eight months.
How Thursday’s Wall Street Rout Spread Around the World
Asia was catching up to Thursday in New York. According to Fox Business, the Dow fell 1,833 points, or 3.44%, and the S&P 500 declined 4.36%. Fox Business said the NASDAQ Composite fell 5.52%, leaving it more than 10% below its October record, which counts as a correction. The Guardian called it the NASDAQ’s worst day in 19 months. The Guardian reported that SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) tumbled 22%, Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) fell 17% and the Vix volatility index jumped 61%.
Fox Business said investors were weighing the Democrats’ sweep in the midterms along with worries about AI regulation and limits on data centers. President Trump gave his own explanation on Truth Social: “The Stock Market suffered one of the Worst Days in History based on the results of the Election.” That is his claim. Big selloffs rarely have a single cause.
Europe followed. By mid-morning in London, The Guardian reported the FTSE was down 207 points, or 1.9%, at 10,575, on pace for its worst day since March. In The Guardian’s mid-morning figures, Germany’s DAX was also off 1.9%, France’s CAC was down 1.5% and Spain’s Ibex was down 1.1%.
Why TSMC Is Down in Taipei but Up in New York
Per Fox Business, NASDAQ futures were up about 1.3% this morning while Dow futures were down 0.71%. TSMC traded at $375.41 in premarket as of 6:10 AM ET, up 6.32% from Thursday’s $353.10 close. By 6:00 AM ET, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) was up 4.02% in premarket and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) was up 4.12%.
So the same company is moving in opposite directions on two exchanges. Taiwan’s market was reacting to Thursday’s U.S. selloff for the first time. The U.S.-listed shares took that hit yesterday and are now trading on this morning’s mood. Premarket trading is thin, and these prices can change at the open.
TSMC’s business looks healthy. Third-quarter revenue reached $46.72 billion, up 41.2% from a year earlier, and the company expects $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion this quarter. On the October 15 earnings call, C.C. Wei said, “Demand is extremely robust, okay? We did not see any sign of a slowdown.” Even so, the stock is down 22.16% over the past month.
What Strategists Are Telling Their Clients
Christopher Forbes of CMC Markets told The Guardian, “It’s actually a bit of a disaster,” and described clients facing margin calls and complaining overnight. Susannah Streeter of Wealth Club said, “Big worries are colliding: the build-out of datacentres looks set to slow, which risks shredding the spending spree underpinning the boom, right at the time that investors have become super nervous about returns on this massive investment.” Mohit Kumar of Jefferies said he did not think this was the “start of the unwind of the AI trade.”
What Regular Investors Should Take From a Wild 24 Hours
Selloffs now spread around the world in hours, and rebounds can spread just as fast. A premarket price can differ sharply from the closing price. Even after Thursday, The Guardian noted the NASDAQ Composite is still up 4.6% for 2026, and TSMC’s U.S. shares are up 24.49% this year. Today, watch two things: whether the NASDAQ futures gain holds up past the opening bell, and whether memory stocks like SanDisk and Western Digital, which led the drop, settle down. If the memory stocks keep falling while TSMC rebounds, investors are treating Thursday’s drop as a problem for memory makers more than for the chip factories behind the AI expansion.
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AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
