Dow loses 500 points, Nasdaq falls 3% on big tech drop and tariff fears: Live updates

Stocks fell sharply on Wednesday as investors heeded a stark warning from Nvidia that pressured global tech and concerns from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about the economic impact of tariffs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 559 points, or 1.4%. The S&P 500 dropped 2.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 3.4%.

Shares of Nvidia sank 8% after the chip giant said it will post a $5.5 billion quarterly charge related to exporting its H20 graphics processing units to China and other nations. The company said in a filing that the U.S. government required a license to send chips from the U.S. to China.

Other chipmakers followed Nvidia lower, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) down more than 5%. AMD slid more than 8%, while Micron Technology slid more than 3%. Adding to the broader chip decline was a disappointing earnings report from ASML, with U.S.-listed shares losing more than 7%.

“The S&P 500 is just much more of a technology-driven index than it has been in the past,” said Zachary Hill, head of portfolio management at Horizon Investments. “It has a disproportionate impact, both to the upside and downside, as we’ve seen. We saw it last week, and now we’re seeing it reverse.”

Stocks slid to session lows in afternoon trading after Fed Chair Powell said President Donald Trump’s tariffs could pose a challenge for the central bank. Powell said during a question-and-answer session that levies could drive up inflation in the near-term and are “likely to move us further away from our goals.”

“We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension,” Powell said in prepared remarks before the Economic Club of Chicago. “If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close.”

The U.S. has announced levies on many countries, but some were put on hold for 90 days last week. Duties on China were excluded from that delay. Trump announced an exemption on tariffs against smartphone and PC imports over the weekend, though he later hinted that this was only temporary.

Since Trump administration first announced its “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite have each dropped more than 7%. The Dow has lost about 6%.