Chip Stocks Endure Longest Losing Streak Since 2006 as CoreWeave Credit Concerns Mount: This Week on Wall Street

The trade that carried Wall Street through much of 2026 just suffered its longest losing streak in more than two decades. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) fell for a ninth straight session Friday, its longest skid since May 2006. The fund lost about 14% since Oct. 5 and 9.4% for the week. The shift goes deeper than a sell-off. Investors aren’t abandoning the AI buildout, but they’re asking a question that has taken a back seat for months: Who pays for it? The Rhyme With Today is the Cost of Money The Federal Reserve raised rates to 5.00% on May 10, 2006. At the time, it was the sixteenth straight hike, and investors sold emerging-market equities alongside commodities. The semiconductor sector, a favorite the prior year, was among the first to crack. Fast forward to 2026: The Fed lifted rates to 3.75%-4.00% in September. The 10-year Treasury yield sat at about 5.09% on Friday, Oct. 16, after touching 5.37% last week. The Credit Channel September consumer prices rose 3.7% from a year earlier, above the 3.6% expected, while the producer price index climbed 6.3%, a four-year high. Odds of an October hike jumped to nearly 50% after the CPI report, then eased to about 17% by Friday morning, according to CME FedWatch. If memory is the plumbing of artificial intelligence, CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV)’s bonds are the water bill. The cloud provider fell 15.5% on Wednesday as the cost of insuring its debt hit a record, and its 9% notes slid to about 80 cents on the dollar, yielding more than 15%. CoreWeave’s credit default swaps, which insurance investors buy to hedge against default, jumped past 1,000 basis points. This implies roughly a 60% chance of default within five years. Read Also: CoreWeave Has ‘Darwin Moment’ As Credit Markets Price In 60% Default Odds Among the Worst Nasdaq 100 Performers Over 5 Days: CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) fell 25.75% Rocket Lab Corp. (NASDAQ:RKLB) at 25.06% Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) at 24.58% Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE) at 24.16%. Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) lost 18.32% and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) 17.37%. Inside the iShares Semiconductor ETF: Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) dropped 21.41% Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:CRDO) 20.81% and MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MTSI) 19.94%. Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), Teradyne Inc. (NASDAQ:TER) and Lam Research Corp. (NASDAQ:LRCX) each fell 16% to 18%. Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) fell 13.18% and Sandisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK) 16.12% Every holding shown in the Roundhill Memory ETF (NYSE:DRAM) finished lower, and optical names fell the most since the dot-com bust. But the sharpest moves came in the networking hardware that wires AI data centers together: Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) plunged 24.8%, its biggest one-day drop since March 31, 2000. Ciena Corp. (NYSE:CIEN) fell 25.02%, its worst day since September 2008. Korea’s Worst Week Since Lehman South Korea’s KOSPI fell 14.46% this week, its worst weekly drop since October 2008, when it lost 20.5% after Lehman Brothers collapsed. Even the March 2020 crash never produced a weekly loss that large. Thursday alone brought a 7.57% plunge and a 20-minute trading halt. SK Hynix Inc. (NASDAQ:SKHY) lost 24.3% on the week and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (OTC:SSNLF) 17.8%, both their worst weeks since 2008. Bank Of America Sees A Cisco Echo Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya reached for a different dot-com analogy in a Friday client note. Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Micron trade at about 13 times forward earnings on average, inside the 10-to-20 range where Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) changed hands after its bubble burst. "Investors are paying post-crash multiples for a cycle that hasn’t crashed," Arya said. Cisco peaked at $82 in March 2000, fell to $8.12 by October 2002 and did not reclaim its high until March 2026. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index now sits about 22% below its June 22 record, its second bear market this year. Money did not leave the market. It moved. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 1.4% this week while the Nasdaq 100 lost nearly 4% and the S&P 500 about 0.8%, and the 10-year yield fell about 15 basis points as investors sought bonds. Image: Shutterstock