The so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks fell sharply Monday, sending the Nasdaq $NDAQ down 4% in what has been its worst day since September 13, 2022, when the Nasdaq composite shed 5.16%.
Nvidia $NVDA dropped a little more than 5% to $106.98 a share on Monday, and Apple $AAPL ended the day down 4.84% at 227.48 a share. Google $GOOGL parent Alphabet and Meta $META ended the day down more than 4%, Microsoft $MSFT was down a little over 3%, and Amazon $AMZN closed down 2.36%.
Tesla $TSLA led the drop, as the stock sunk 15.42%, closing the day at $222.42 a share. Tesla shares have been on a steady decline amid blowback over CEO Elon Musk’s political activities and work to slash government spending through the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. Protestors against Musk have turned their attention to vandalism of Tesla cars, showrooms and facilities, with some protests even turning violent.
As of Monday’s close, Tesla had a market capitalization of roughly $714.55 billion.
The stock’s wipeout has caused Musk’s net worth to plunge by more than $150 billion so far this year.
Investors are worried about the effect of President Donald Trump’s economic policies, especially the uncertainty around tariffs and growing fears of a possible recession, which Trump didn’t rule out when asked on Sunday. Last week was the stock market’s worst in two years and the Nasdaq fell into correction on Thursday, falling more than 10% from its latest peak in December.
Trump’s trade war is perceived to be a big threat for the Big Tech stocks, particularly giants like Tesla and Apple. China is Tesla’s second largest market after the United States and the company owns a major assembly plant there, while Apple makes a majority of its iPhones in China. Trump has paused much of the wide-ranging tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but the China tariffs are still on as Beijing retaliates.
Looming over the U.S.-China trade riffs is fears over advancing AI capabilities coming out of China. Last week, Chinese researchers launched an early preview of Manus AI, a general AI agent able to autonomously perform tasks like planning trips and analyzing stocks. Apple was expected to unveil a similar AI-enhanced Siri in the coming months, but investors’ hopes were crushed on Friday when the company announced that it would be delaying it until next year and pulled an ad featuring the AI version of Siri.