"Trump rally" comes to a sudden stop as Nasdaq gives back all gains since last year's presidential election.

After a 2.6% plunge on Thursday, the Nasdaq index has given up all its gains since Trump's election victory and is facing its worst week since September last year. Concerns over tariffs, lower than expected employment data, and a cooling artificial intelligence (AI) market are causing severe volatility in tech stocks. This round of selling marks a major shift in the tech industry. After Trump won the election in November last year, top tech executives flocked to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to show their support and publicly announced their support for his inauguration ceremony. Tech giants such as Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai attended the presidential inauguration in January. Over the past two years, tech stocks have performed strongly driven by the AI boom. In 2023, the Nasdaq index surged 43%, and last year it rose 29%, with AI beneficiaries such as NVIDIA Corporation and Meta performing exceptionally well. However, the market dynamics are changing now. Aaron Dunn, co-head of value equities at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, said in an interview on Thursday that the uncertainty surrounding Trump's economic policies, coupled with a general decrease in investor risk appetite, has led to the current pullback in tech stocks. "We prefer to focus on 'all-weather' companies that can survive in various market environments," Dunn pointed out. The market is withdrawing from high-risk investments and turning to companies that can withstand government policy fluctuations because future market volatility may be on a daily basis. Investors are particularly concerned about the potential cost increases due to tariff policies. On Tuesday midnight, the Trump administration officially imposed a 25% tariff on imported goods from two major U.S. trading partners - Canada and Mexico - and a 10% tariff on imports from China. Despite providing temporary tariff exemptions for some goods from Mexico and Canada, market sentiment remains low. Since the beginning of the year, the stock prices of tech giants have been dropping, with Tesla, Inc. being one of the worst-performing tech leaders, falling by 35% since the beginning of the year and dropping nearly 6% on Thursday. The significant drop in Tesla, Inc.'s stock price is particularly noteworthy, as its CEO Musk plays an important role in the Trump administration. Musk's first full month in the White House (February) was also Tesla, Inc.'s worst-performing month since 2022 on the stock market. NVIDIA Corporation's stock price has fallen by 18% since the beginning of the year and plummeted by over 11% this week, reaching its lowest level since September last year. As a key driver of the AI market, NVIDIA Corporation's GPU products rely on a global supply chain, with its chips mainly manufactured in Taiwan, but some advanced systems and complete machine products are produced in Mexico and the U.S. NVIDIA Corporation CFO Colette Kress said in last month's earnings call that it is not yet clear about the specific impact of tariffs and more policy guidance from the U.S. government is needed. Chipmaker Broadcom Inc. saw its stock price double last year due to increased demand for AI systems, but it has fallen by 22% this year. Another chip company, Marvell Technology, Inc., saw a 20% drop in its stock price on Thursday, as its performance guidance failed to meet market expectations, with a cumulative decline of 35% since the beginning of the year. Apart from tariff policies, investors are also intensifying their concerns about economic growth. Weak data from the U.S. job market is the latest market negative. Data released by payroll processing company ADP on Wednesday showed that the U.S. private sector added only 77,000 jobs in February, far below the market's general expectation of 148,000. This data has raised concerns about economic slowdown in the market, further exacerbating the market's uneasiness. If the market does not show a strong rebound on Friday, the Nasdaq index will face its third consecutive week of declines and its fifth decline in the past six weeks.