Nasdaq-100 Shrugs Off the Hottest PPI Since 2022 as Chip Dip-Buyers Step In

The PPI That Should Have Broken the Tape

April producer prices came in up 1.4% month over month and 6% year over year, the largest single-month gain since April 2022 and nearly three times the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus. Core PPI, stripping out food and energy, printed 1% versus the 0.4% estimate. Coming a day after the April CPI shock that drove Tuesday's 1.7% Nasdaq Composite drawdown, the print should have been the second hammer.

It wasn't. The S&P 500 printed a fresh intraday record and the Nasdaq tacked on roughly 0.9% by midday, even as two-thirds of the index traded red. XYZ100 on Hyperliquid moved with the cash tape, reclaiming ~$29,330 on $185M of 24h perp volume after slipping to ~$28,880 a session earlier. Energy remained the inflation driver — the same Strait of Hormuz blockade story that has whipped the index since early April — but the market chose to look through it for a day.

Why Chips Bid the Dip Anyway

The bounce was entirely a semiconductor story. After Tuesday's drubbing — Qualcomm -12%, Intel -9%, AMD -5% — dip-buyers walked back in. Nvidia traded up roughly 2%, Micron more than 3%, and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) advanced 2%. Qualcomm bounced 4.3% in the premarket before holding most of the gain through the open.

The specific catalyst that gave the chip bid cover: reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would join President Trump on his China visit, reigniting hope that export-control friction loosens rather than tightens. That's a thin reed, but it was enough — when the same names that lost 5 to 12% the prior day are still the heaviest weights in the index, even modest buying flips the tape green. The Nasdaq-100 is now, mechanically, the chip tape with extra steps.

Rates Repriced, the Bid Held

Two consecutive hot inflation prints have killed the dovish thesis outright. Markets have completely priced out rate cuts for the remainder of 2026, and December FOMC odds of a hike are now approaching 40% — a hard repricing from the cut-skewed curve that ran into May. The 2-year sits around 4%, the 10-year near 4.5%.

That normally crushes long-duration growth equity. It didn't today, which is the only thing worth noting. The Nasdaq-100 absorbed a 6% YoY PPI print, a fully repriced hiking path, and a -1.6% gap the day before — and bid. Wolfe Research, quoted in coverage of the day's action, noted the rally off the U.S.-Iran war lows is starting to feel toppy and that tech is overdue for consolidation. For now, that consolidation looks like 'down one day, up the next, ignore the macro.' The XYZ100 perp on Hyperliquid is the cleanest way to express it — and the cleanest way to get run over if the chip bid finally exhausts.