What Happened?
A number of stocks fell in the afternoon session after new trade tensions and disappointing earnings from major tech companies weighed heavily on investor sentiment.
A key driver was the news that the White House is considering new restrictions on Chinese exports that use U.S. software, a move that could significantly impact technology companies. This uncertainty over escalating trade tensions created a broad sense of worry in the market. Simultaneously, shares of the semiconductor giant Texas Instruments dropped 6% after its latest earnings and future revenue forecast both came in weaker than expected, which is a big concern for the health of the tech industry. This poor performance from Texas Instruments immediately dragged down the entire semiconductor sector, causing other major chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices and Micron Technology to also see significant declines.
Compounding the bad news, streaming service Netflix saw its stock slump 9% after it missed its earnings targets, partly blaming a tax dispute in Brazil. The combined effect of renewed trade war fears and the direct evidence of underperformance from influential companies in the technology sector was enough to push the major market indexes lower.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Digital Media & Content Platforms company Getty Images (NYSE:GETY) fell 2.5%. Is now the time to buy Getty Images? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Enterprise Networking company Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) fell 10.1%. Is now the time to buy Applied Digital? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Data & Business Process Services company Planet Labs (NYSE:PL) fell 6.2%. Is now the time to buy Planet Labs? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Hardware & Infrastructure company Super Micro (NASDAQ:SMCI) fell 7.1%. Is now the time to buy Super Micro? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Hardware & Infrastructure company IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) fell 11.5%. Is now the time to buy IonQ? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
Zooming In On IonQ (IONQ)
IonQ’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 107 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for IonQ and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 8 days ago when the stock dropped 5.9% on the news that the company announced a $2 billion equity offering.
The deal included 16.5 million shares of common stock, approximately 5 million pre-funded warrants, and over 43 million seven-year warrants. Companies often use these types of offerings to raise cash to help fund growth and commercialization efforts. However, investors reacted cautiously to the potential for share dilution from such a large equity sale. The added shares increased the total number of shares available, which can put pressure on a stock's value in the short term. This risk is common for companies in capital-intensive fields like quantum computing that rely on consistent funding to develop their technology.
IonQ is up 24.7% since the beginning of the year, but at $53.77 per share, it is still trading 34.5% below its 52-week high of $82.09 from October 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of IonQ’s shares at the IPO in January 2021 would now be looking at an investment worth $4,977.
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