ASML experienced a sharp drop of over 15% at one point, with Q3 orders significantly below market expectations, dragging down the semiconductor sector

ASML's performance fell short of expectations, with a straight-line plunge during trading, dropping by as much as 15% at one point.

Dragging down the semiconductor sector, NVIDIA fell by 6% at one point, AMD by 5%, Taiwan Semiconductor by 3%, Broadcom by 4%, the Philadelphia Semiconductor ETF by 3.5%, and SOXL by over 13% at one point.

On the news front, ASML's third-quarter orders were 2.63 billion euros, below the market's expectation of 5.39 billion euros. In addition, ASML expects net sales in the fourth quarter to be between 8.8 billion euros and 9.2 billion euros, with the market expecting 8.95 billion euros. The expected full-year net sales are 28 billion euros, with the market expecting 27.71 billion euros.

Furthermore, on October 15th local time, foreign media cited sources as saying that the U.S. is discussing setting limits on export licenses for U.S. companies such as NVIDIA and AMD for certain countries' artificial intelligence (AI) chips. These restrictions will focus on Gulf countries, where the demand for AI data centers is growing, and the measures will impact the AI capabilities of some countries