The AI trade’s worst day in a year became a buying opportunity by Monday

On Friday, the Nasdaq had its worst session in a year. By Monday it all seemed like a bad dream. The chipmakers that had their worst session since 2020 on Friday (Micron, Broadcom) were Monday’s best performers, up 6.5% by midday. Wall Street appears to consider Friday as a welcome easing off of a record-setting rally, as opposed to a genuine repricing of the AI trade that other analysts warned of. New York’s bad dream was, overnight, Asia’s waking one. South Korea’s KOSPI—the best-performing major index in the world this year—plunged as much as 8.8% at the open Monday, triggering a 20-minute trading halt, its third of 2026, and closed down 8.29%. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix—the two memory-chip makers that together make up roughly half of the index—fell about 10% and 8%, respectively; the won opened at a 17-year low against the dollar. Japan’s Nikkei lost 3.9%, China’s CSI 300 2.1%. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang also called Friday’s selloff a buying opportunity, telling investors demand for AI chips keeps outrunning supply. It echoed the case he made at Nvidia’s GTC conference in March, when he projected $1 trillion in combined sales for the company’s Blackwell and next-generation Vera Rubin chips through 2027—double an earlier forecast—and called demand “off the charts.” It appears like the markets listened to him. ‘A healthy reset’ Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Mike Wilson called Friday a “healthy reset,” noting markets “rarely move in a straight line” at the pace seen since the March lows, and reaffirmed an 8,000 target for the S&P 500, now trading around 7,460. Chris Larkin, an analyst from Morgan Stanley made the same point from the other side: after nine straight weeks, he wrote the market “was arguably due for at least a reset.” “Last week didn’t derail the rally, but it may have made it more sensitive to negative surprises in