NASDAQ 100 suffers worst daily performance since Trump tariffs

One hour before the normal Friday market, NASDAQ 100 (NDX) is facing its worst sell-off since U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs in April 2025. The NASDAQ 100 index of the 100 largest non-financial companies has shed its powerful two-month gain. The index fell 3.87%, its worst decline since April 4, 2025, when Trump’s tariff announcement led to a 6.07% decline in a single day.

The culprit was a positive jobs report, which before the market opened showed novel hires in May reaching 172,000, well above forecasts of 85,000. The improving U.S. labor market means the Federal Reserve (Fed) is more likely to refocus on rising inflation, with the growing possibility of a rise in interest rates. The stock market traditionally hates cycles of interest rate increases that heavily discount the value of future profits.

Barring a tardy afternoon rally, the index will exceed the 3.56% loss recorded on Oct. 10, 2025, when Trump threatened novel tariffs on China.

The heat map below shows that the hardest-hit sector is undoubtedly technology, which has led the current surge, which began on March 30 this year and began a spectacular surge after the United States and Iran entered a turbulent ceasefire on April 8.

Heat map of the US stock market on the afternoon of June 5, 2026

Strategy (MSTR) leads the pack lower as Bitcoin (BTC) loses 6.5%, trading below $60,000. Many of the hardest hit tech stocks are semiconductor stocks, such as Arm hold (ARM), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Marvell Technologies (MRVL) AND Micron (MU).

Larger technology companies, e.g Microsoft (MSFT), Tesla (TSLA) AND Nvidia (NVDA) dropped from 2% to 5%. NAND manufacturer Sandisk (SNDK)one of the best performers of the year, fell by over 13%.

Sell in May and walk away?

The NASDAQ 100 is bleeding for now, but support could come soon. On the daily chart below, the support band is located between 28,600 and 28,900. However, a break in this relationship would cause investors to expect a further decline to the 50-day basic moving average near 27,450.

Nasdaq 100 daily chart — Daily chart of the NDX index with year-to-date performance

At this stage, investors should expect this as the index has significantly moved ahead of the 50-day SMA over the last two months, which is quite a infrequent occurrence. Since mid-April, the relative strength index (RSI) has been drifting in overbought territory (above the 70 threshold).