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Nvidia is rebounding after biggest market cap loss in history, but it’s a fragile bounce

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, showcasing the company’s latest innovations in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, on January 6, 2025. 

Artur Widak | Anadolu | Getty Images

Nvidia shares traded higher in the premarket Tuesday, as traders reassessed the implications of a much cheaper-to-build large-language model for the artificial intelligence trade.

The chipmaker’s rebound in the early session was shaky, with it up about 3.7%. The stock’s bounce was much bigger earlier in the morning and was reducing as the open neared.

The stock plunged 17% on Monday and slashed more than $595 billion from the company’s valuation, the biggest single-day market cap decline on record.

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Monday’s steep sell-off — which sent shockwaves across the broader tech industry, with Nasdaq Composite dropping 3% —  came as traders grew fearful that an AI stock bubble could burst due to the emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek.

DeepSeek last week released an open-source model that reportedly outperformed OpenAI’s in different tests. The company also said the initial version of this model cost less than $6 million to build — a fraction of the billions of dollars major U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.

To be sure, Nvidia — which has been the posterchild of the U.S. AI trade due to its high-powered chips  — called DeepSeek’s R1 model “an excellent AI advancement.”

“DeepSeek’s work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant,” an Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.

Additionally, most Wall Street analysts stood by Nvidia after the sell-off, with none of them downgrading the stock thus far. Some also see the DeepSeek developments as a long-term positive for AI.

“We think investors need to differentiate between the impacts around potential benefits and drawbacks of DeepSeek for the software industry. More powerful LLM models that can run at a fraction of the original cost estimates (if confirmed) will mean that genAI adoption should come easier … and hence, faster and broader across the software universe,” wrote Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow.

To be sure, while Morgan Stanley’s Joseph Moore kept his overweight rating on the stock, he did trim his price target to $152 from $166 on Tuesday.

“The DeepSeek release highlights evolutionary innovations in AI, some of which may be deflationary. That said, the stock market reaction is probably more important than the cause, and could bring further export controls or reduce spending enthusiasm; trimming PTs but remain positive,” he said.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: WOOF, TSLA, CRCL, LULU

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Swiss government proposes tough new capital rules in major blow to UBS

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A sign in German that reads “part of the UBS group” in Basel on May 5, 2025.

Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

The Swiss government on Friday proposed strict new capital rules that would require banking giant UBS to hold an additional $26 billion in core capital, following its 2023 takeover of stricken rival Credit Suisse.

The measures would also mean that UBS will need to fully capitalize its foreign units and carry out fewer share buybacks.

“The rise in the going-concern requirement needs to be met with up to USD 26 billion of CET1 capital, to allow the AT1 bond holdings to be reduced by around USD 8 billion,” the government said in a Friday statement, referring to UBS’ holding of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds.

The Swiss National Bank said it supported the measures from the government as they will “significantly strengthen” UBS’ resilience.

“As well as reducing the likelihood of a large systemically important bank such as UBS getting into financial distress, this measure also increases a bank’s room for manoeuvre to stabilise itself in a crisis through its own efforts. This makes it less likely that UBS has to be bailed out by the government in the event of a crisis,” SNB said in a Friday statement.

‘Too big to fail’

UBS has been battling the specter of tighter capital rules since acquiring the country’s second-largest bank at a cut-price following years of strategic errors, mismanagement and scandals at Credit Suisse.

The shock demise of the banking giant also brought Swiss financial regulator FINMA under fire for its perceived scarce supervision of the bank and the ultimate timing of its intervention.

Swiss regulators argue that UBS must have stronger capital requirements to safeguard the national economy and financial system, given the bank’s balance topped $1.7 trillion in 2023, roughly double the projected Swiss economic output of last year. UBS insists it is not “too big to fail” and that the additional capital requirements — set to drain its cash liquidity — will impact the bank’s competitiveness.

At the heart of the standoff are pressing concerns over UBS’ ability to buffer any prospective losses at its foreign units, where it has, until now, had the duty to back 60% of capital with capital at the parent bank.

Higher capital requirements can whittle down a bank’s balance sheet and credit supply by bolstering a lender’s funding costs and choking off their willingness to lend — as well as waning their appetite for risk. For shareholders, of note will be the potential impact on discretionary funds available for distribution, including dividends, share buybacks and bonus payments.

“While winding down Credit Suisse’s legacy businesses should free up capital and reduce costs for UBS, much of these gains could be absorbed by stricter regulatory demands,” Johann Scholtz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a note preceding the FINMA announcement. 

“Such measures may place UBS’s capital requirements well above those faced by rivals in the United States, putting pressure on returns and reducing prospects for narrowing its long-term valuation gap. Even its long-standing premium rating relative to the European banking sector has recently evaporated.”

The prospect of stringent Swiss capital rules and UBS’ extensive U.S. presence through its core global wealth management division comes as White House trade tariffs already weigh on the bank’s fortunes. In a dramatic twist, the bank lost its crown as continental Europe’s most valuable lender by market capitalization to Spanish giant Santander in mid-April.

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TSLA, CRCL, AVGO, LULU and more

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