The Fed is hawkish, tech stocks are plummeting, so why are chip equipment stocks rising instead? — Don't buy AI stocks as a single thing.

Conclusion first: Last night, the new Fed Chairman Warsh held a hawkish meeting (hinting at a possible rate hike this year), causing tech stocks in the US market to plummet, with the Nasdaq falling 1.34% and Meta dropping as much as 5% at one point. Strangely, however, ASML, a chip equipment maker, rose about 4% on the same day, and the semiconductor sector as a whole showed strong resilience. This indicates: the market is not abandoning AI, but rather picking winners within AI—this determines which type you should buy and which to avoid.
Why did tech platforms fall? Companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon have high stock prices based on the story that "AI will make big money in the next decade." Once interest rates rise (money becomes more expensive), the more distant the future earnings, the less valuable they become. This type of stock, which relies on "future stories," falls the hardest. This is called a valuation reset (it's not that the companies have worsened, but the price the market is willing to pay has decreased).
Then why did a chip equipment company like ASML rise instead? Because it sells tangible orders—the delivery schedule for lithography machines (the core machines for making chips) and how much customers spend on building factories are all visible. In times of panic, this kind of "visible certainty" becomes a safe haven.
But there's a premise you need to know: the rise in equipment stocks is a bet that "even if interest rates rise, AI companies will not cut their equipment purchase budgets." This assumption holds for now, but if one day a major company's earnings report says "we need to spend less," the equipment stocks that rose the most steadily today could fall the fastest.
So what to do (Discover → Understand → Trade): You already know why some rose and some fell among AI stocks today; you also understand the difference between platforms relying on stories and equipment relying on orders. The next step—don't shout "AI is finished" and blindly buy the dip when you see the Nasdaq plummet, and don't chase the highs when you see ASML up 4%. If you want to participate, watch for one signal: whether the "equipment purchase budget (capex)" in major companies' earnings reports is still increasing or not. If it increases, the certainty of equipment holds; if not, today's gains will be given back.My own stance: no bottom-fishing in tech platforms, no chasing highs in equipment, keeping gold to hedge against inflation.

$ASML(ASML.US)