Qualcomm Shares Slide as Chip Rout Spreads From Seoul to Wall Street
Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) shares fell 4.7% in afternoon trading on Tuesday, caught in a broad semiconductor selloff that spread from Seoul to Wall Street. The decline was part of a coordinated rout driven by three overlapping pressures: a leverage-induced plunge in South Korean chip stocks, heightened skepticism about debt-fueled AI capital expenditure, and a hawkish repricing of Federal Reserve rate expectations under new Chair Kevin Warsh.
The immediate trigger was a positioning flush rather than a fundamental breakdown in AI demand. South Korea’s KOSPI index, which had surged roughly 95% year-to-date, tumbled 10%, triggering a trading halt. SK Hynix and Samsung each lost more than 10% after a local media report suggested SK Hynix is slowing its expansion of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI and shifting focus toward cheaper commodity DRAM. SK Hynix declined to comment, but the report was widely interpreted as a cautionary signal about AI data-center demand.
Compounding the selloff was a sharp repricing of Fed expectations. Under newly appointed Chair Kevin Warsh, market-implied odds of a second rate hike in 2026 jumped to roughly 85% from around 60%, tightening financial conditions and making debt-financed AI investments harder to justify at already elevated valuations.
History suggests the market may be overreacting. Qualcomm’s shares have had 22 moves greater than 5% over the past year, and today’s decline, while sharp, does not signal a shift in the company’s long-term trajectory. The previous big move came just one day ago, when the stock fell 8.6% on the same SK Hynix report.
A closer look at the underlying report reveals a margin story, not a demand story. SK Hynix is deliberately slowing its HBM4 ramp to reallocate capacity to conventional DRAM, where shortages have pushed operating margins above HBM levels. Korean analysts estimate the margin gap exceeds 15 percentage points. While HBM is critical for Nvidia’s AI accelerators—making any “slow HBM” headline a reflex sell signal—the more accurate read is that all three major memory makers are running the market tight. Samsung flagged a 146% jump in DRAM average selling prices in the first quarter, while SK Hynix reported mid-60% margins, keeping pricing power firmly with sellers.
Profit-taking likely played a role. Micron, which had surged roughly 300% since the start of the year, fell 11% in the session, while Nvidia, which is more logic-heavy, dropped only about 3.6%. Wedbush analysts framed the selloff as a buying opportunity, noting that enterprise AI demand remains intact.
As of the close, Qualcomm shares were at $193.07, up 11.6% year-to-date but still 23.1% below the 52-week high of $251.02 reached in May 2026. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Qualcomm shares five years ago would now hold approximately $1,400.
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