The Nasdaq 100 Index plunged 3.8% with Monday’s selling wiping out more than $1 trillion in value. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg Magnificent 7 Index — an equal-weighted gauge of the biggest US tech stocks — tumbled 5.4% to bring its rout from a December record to more than 20%. Tesla Inc. tumbled 15%, widening its loss this year to 45%, while Nvidia Corp. lost 5.1% and has erased more than $1 trillion in market value in two months.
The tech wreckage comes after a weekend that saw Trump administration officials and President Donald Trump himself suggest that the American economy is set to slow. The change in language from the campaign trail, when Trump promised tariffs on Day One that would pay for tax cuts without disrupting the growth, has sparked a frenzied repricing of risk assets.
“Sell your winners, embrace the bear case and duck and cover,” said Michael Bailey, director of research at Fulton Breakefield Broenniman.
By virtually any accounting, the winners until recently had been megacap tech. Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple soared to valuations north of $3 trillion, Amazon and Alphabet weren’t far behind. Even Tesla saw its market worth top $1 trillion.
For weeks, Wall Street had been cautiously moving from tech to more defensive sectors as on-again, off-again trade policies unnerved investors at the same time inflation proved sticky. That rotation accelerated Monday after unnerving comments on growth over the weekend.
The selloff has been even more extreme in the speculative corners of the market. A basket of profitless technology companies tumbled 6.6% on Monday and is down 23% this year. The gauge is on pace for the worst quarter since 2022.
When asked whether he’s expecting a recession this year, Trump said, “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big.” And on Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talked about “a detox period” as the US moves away from public spending.
With the exception of Meta, all the Magnificent 7 stocks are in the red for the year, with Nvidia down double digits and Tesla shedding nearly $600 billion off its value so far in 2025.
“All of these stocks were priced for perfection across the board,” said James Abate, chief investment officer at Centre Asset Management LLC. “Clearly you have a market that’s in the process of de-risking.”
