Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s signed leather jacket sold for $960,000 Friday, the same day semiconductor stocks fell into a bear market.
The contrast captures an AI boom with a cultural appeal that remains intact even as traders brace for much larger swings in its most important stocks
Fear has surged in chip stocks while remaining remarkably contained across the broader market. The Cboe SMH Volatility Index uses options prices to estimate expected movement over the next 30 days in the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH). The Cboe Volatility Index (^VIX) measures the same basic thing for the S&P 500.
Subtracting one from the other shows how much extra turbulence traders expect from chip stocks. That gap recently reached nearly 47 volatility points and remains close to 45. That is a striking departure from the broad market panic after the “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced in April 2025.