Nvidia Shares Tank After Blowout While Asian Partners Ride High

Nvidia  (NVDA)  shares may be tanking in response to the chip designer’s blowout earnings, in a “sell the news” response. But the company’s partners outside Nvidia’s home market have charged higher as a reaction to an undoubtedly strong quarterly report.

Heaven forfend should Nvidia ever disappoint! Investors have come to expect that the company will beat expectations, one of those market tautologies alongside the “bad news is good news” you occasionally get from, say, a bad jobs report that hints at a U.S. Fed rate cut.

Nvidia shares fell as much as 5.6% in early trade on Thursday, despite the company reporting its 14^th straight quarter of revenue beats. Thursday's selling puts the company narrowly in the red for the year.

Exceptional Numbers

The fundamentals are exceptionally strong. Nvidia’s profit for the last 12 months rose to a mammoth $120 billion, up 65%, on sales of $215.9 billion that were also up 65%. The company also forecast Q1 sales of $78.0 billion, up 77% over the same time last year. You can find further details in the company’s quarterly release here.

But do the numbers matter anymore?! There will come a time when it misses the mark, but for now, even strong beats lead to selling.

Where we saw a strong response was in Nvidia’s partners and suppliers overseas.

South Korea’s exceptional performance continues. Just when I think the market can’t possibly move any higher, it surges once more.

The benchmark Kospi in Seoul is up 49.7% this year alone. That’s after it ran up 75.6% in 2025, to lead the world’s main markets.

Nvidia Partners Riding High

Thursday's 3.7% rise for Korean stocks comes on the backs of long-time Nvidia partner Samsung Electronics (KR:005930), up 7.1% on Thursday, and SK Hynix HXSCL (KR:000660), up 8.0% on Thursday.

Hynix supplies high-performance, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to Nvidia, a frontrunner developing top-flight chips for use in data centers and artificial intelligence (AI). It is stepping up production of sixth-generation HBM4 chips for use in Nvidia’s Rubin AI platform.

Samsung has, though, been playing catchup and this month said it started shipping HBM4 chips to unnamed customers. U.S. rival Micron Technology  (MU)  also says it is starting to ship HBM4 chips.

So Micron shares are down 2.8% on Thursday in sympathy with the Nvidia selling. Samsung and Hynix, which combined make up 39.6% of the total market capitalization in Seoul, may see selling on Friday, but their rapid gains drove the Kospi above 6,000 for the first time on Wednesday, and above 6,300 on Thursday, with a close at 6,307.

TSMC Shares Slip on Thursday, Surge in 2026

There was a slip for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.  (TSM)  (TW:2330), down 1.0% on Thursday. But TSMC is up 25.9% year to date, the chief driver of the Taiwan benchmark, the Taiex, which is showing a 20.7% year-to-date advance.

TSMC’s rapid rise means it makes up an ever-increasing share of the total Taiwan market. At last count, its market cap has risen to NT$51.7 trillion ($1.65 trillion), or almost half of the total Taiwan market value of NT$106.7 trillion ($3.4 trillion). The benchmark Taiex was flat on Thursday in Taiwan trade.

TSMC’s American Depository Shares trading in New York are down 3.8% on Thursday at the end of morning trade in New York. So we can expect a decline in Asia on Friday.

The impact of chipmakers is clearest in Taiwan and South Korea. But tech stocks fired Japan stocks higher on Thursday, with the blue-chip Nikkei 225 up 0.3% and the broad-market Topix moving ahead 1.0%.

All-Time Closing Highs

The close for the Kospi, Nikkei and Topix are all all-time highs. The Nikkei is approaching the 60,000 mark, closing Thursday at 58,753.

SoftBank Group  (SFTBY)  (T:9984), one of the world’s largest tech investors and a major advocate of AI, rose 4.0% on Thursday, helping lift the Topix Information & Communication sector index to a 2.6% rise. Oracle Japan (T:4716), a listed subsidiary of Oracle  (ORCL) , shot up 6.6%.

I should note that Thursday's gains were strongest outside of the Japan chip sector. Chip-testing equipment maker Advantest ATEYY (T:6857) fell 1.7% on Thursday, although my pick for the year among Asian equities is up 32.8% in 2026. Similarly, Tokyo Electron TOELY (T:8035) fell 2.0% on Thursday but is up 22.7% year to date. 

While U.S. markets struggle for direction, stocks in Asia have generally continued last year’s strong showing into 2026.

HSBC Holdings  (HSBC)  (HK:0005), the British bank with its roots in Hong Kong, has this week halved its overweight position on U.S. equities, rotating into emerging markets and Europe.

Thanks to the bank’s exposure to Asia and Europe, HSBC shares closed at an all-time high today in Hong Kong, at HK$145.00, up 1.6% for Thursday.

While we can expect selling in Asia on Friday as a response to Thursday's tepid U.S. reaction to Nvidia’s numbers, the broader market response so far this year, where the S&P 500 is barely scraping a gain in 2026, certainly makes an exceptional case for international diversification. 

At the time of publication, McMillan was long NVDA.