On the 19th local time, US AI concept stocks ushered in a fierce “Black Friday.”

Nvidia, which has the aura of being the “strongest stock on the surface”, plummeted 10%, and its market capitalization evaporated by more than 210 billion US dollars overnight, the biggest one-day decline since March 2020, down more than 20% from its historical high in early March this year.

Nvidia's competitor AMD plummeted 5.4%, chip design company Arm fell nearly 17%, foundry leader TSMC fell more than 3%, chip makers Broadcom and Marvell fell 4.3% and 4.8% respectively, and memory chip supplier Micron fell 4.6%...

The main trigger for the collapse also fell the most “miserable” on the same day — ultra-microcomputer stock prices plummeted 23.14%, down more than 40% from their all-time high in March.

Prior to that, this server vendor, which has a very close relationship with Nvidia, had a strong “ten times a year” rise, and its dynamics were once regarded by the market as “an important indicator for observing the development of the Nvidia and AI market.”

However, the source of market panic this time is that ultra-micro computers, unusually, did not announce preliminary financial results in advance.

On April 19, local time, Ultramicrocomputer announced that it will announce financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, and will hold a conference call at 5:00 p.m. EST (2:00 p.m. Pacific Time). Other than that, no further financial details were given.

However, in recent quarters, ultra-microcomputers will disclose their impressive sales and profit performance in advance. For example, in January of this year, the company disclosed its preliminary results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 11 days before the official financial data was released.

This ultra-microcomputer broke with convention. Wells Fargo Securities pointed out that it did not give a positive advance statement and did not disclose important AI data, which was viewed as a negative sign. Other analysts pointed out that Ultramicrocomputer did not publish preliminary revenue reports as usual, which may mean that its quarterly results are weaker than expected.

Avinash Gorakshkar, head of research at Profitmart Securities, also said that the main reason for Nvidia's sharp decline was that hardware partners only announced the performance announcement date and did not disclose initial results; in addition, Netflix's weak quarterly performance also caused some damage to US technology stock prices. Gorakshkar expects Nvidia's stock price to remain sideways to a downturn until the ultra-microcomputer announces its results.

A negative signal triggered a sell-off, and investors competed to profit before the potential bubble burst, which eventually led to the “collapse” of US AI concept stocks.

It is worth noting that “performance dragged down the AI concept stock price of US stocks” once in August of last year: at that time, ultra-microcomputer hit a new high stock price on August 7, 2023, but the stock price directly “dived” down 23.39% after disclosing financial reports after the market on the 8th. Although the company's Q4 results for FY2023 exceeded market expectations at the time, the median guidance given for the next quarter fell short of expectations.

Furthermore, recent semiconductor individual stock earnings reports have also begun to “sound a wake-up call” for the market, which also seems to have given investors in AI concept stocks a “reminder.”

For example, semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML (ASML)'s earnings report was poor, sales performance fell more than expected, and the company's stock price has been falling for three consecutive days; TSMC also lowered its overall semiconductor market outlook for the whole year in France this week, causing many semiconductor concept stocks around the world to fall.

Editor/Jeffrey