NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 10:37 ET — Regular session
- Nvidia was down about 1.8% and Intel up about 0.7% after Intel disclosed Nvidia completed a $5 billion purchase of Intel shares.
- Semiconductor and Nasdaq-100 ETFs were modestly lower in thin holiday trading as investors trimmed tech exposure.
- Traders are watching Fed meeting minutes and weekly jobless claims later this week, with U.S. markets shut Thursday for New Year’s Day.
Nvidia shares fell nearly 2% in morning trading on Monday after Intel said in a filing that the AI chip leader completed a $5 billion purchase of Intel stock. Intel shares were slightly higher.
The pullback matters because big tech and chip stocks have done much of the heavy lifting for U.S. equities in 2025, leaving the market sensitive to moves in a handful of AI bellwethers.
It also lands in the final, holiday-thinned stretch of the year, when liquidity can be light and small flows can have an outsized impact on high-profile names. U.S. markets are shut on Thursday for New Year’s Day.
The Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), a proxy for megacap tech, was down about 0.5%. Semiconductor ETFs also eased, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) off about 0.7%.
Intel’s filing said Nvidia bought more than 214.7 million Intel shares at $23.28 a share, under a deal announced in September.
The shares were sold in a private placement — a direct sale to an investor rather than a public offering — and U.S. antitrust agencies had cleared the investment earlier in December, Reuters reported.
Other AI chip names were broadly lower alongside Nvidia. Advanced Micro Devices was down about 1%, and Broadcom fell about 1%.
Among megacap AI beneficiaries, Microsoft was down about 1%, while Alphabet and Meta Platforms also traded lower.
Not every AI-adjacent name was in the red. DigitalBridge jumped about 10% after SoftBank said it would acquire the digital infrastructure investor in a deal valued at $4 billion.
“They’ll likely need tech to do much of the heavy lifting,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. Reuters
Investors have been looking for a “Santa Claus rally” — the seasonal tendency for the S&P 500 to rise in the last five trading days of the year and the first two sessions of January — though early-week trading showed less momentum in tech. Reuters
On the calendar, traders are focused on minutes from the Federal Reserve’s prior meeting and a weekly reading on jobless claims in an otherwise light week for U.S. economic data.
With volumes expected to stay thin into year-end, investors said the next test for AI-linked shares will be whether chip leaders stabilize enough to keep broader indexes supported into the holiday-shortened close of 2025.
