{"id":628697,"date":"2026-08-09T14:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/628697\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T14:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:05:14","slug":"intel-nvidia-and-the-wild-swings-beneath-a-calm-market-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/628697\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel, Nvidia and the wild swings beneath a calm market \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can a stock market be simultaneously calm and chaotic?<\/p>\n

One would be forgiven for thinking things have been a bit bonkers lately. Individual stocks have taken investors on the proverbial rollercoaster ride, with spectacular climbs followed by stomach-churning drops.<\/p>\n

For example, shares in chipmaker Intel<\/a>, which employs about 4,900 people in Ireland, have risen fivefold over the past year. However, it has not been a smooth ride, with Intel plunging more than 40 per cent from its recent peak before rebounding 25 per cent in just five trading sessions.<\/p>\n

Shareholders in another chip stock, SanDisk, may consider Intel\u2019s journey almost pedestrian. A year ago, the company was worth $6 billion (\u20ac5.2 billion). By late June, it was worth $350 billion, following a surge of almost 5,500 per cent. <\/p>\n

Those who wondered whether the market had got a little ahead of itself got their answer when shares fell almost 60 per cent over the next four weeks, before rebounding 26 per cent in a single day.<\/p>\n

Other examples abound. IBM<\/a>, supposedly a boring blue-chip company, suffered a record one-day fall of 25 per cent on July 14th. <\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most valuable company, Nvidia<\/a>, lost more than a trillion dollars in market value during the recent market pullback, before rebounding 17 per cent in a week. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft \u2013 even among the world\u2019s largest companies, investors are displaying an unusual willingness to rapidly change their minds, with the market narrative shifting from one day to the next. And yet, casual index investors may not have noticed a thing. <\/p>\n

The S&P 500 was flat in July and is up 12 per cent in 2026. Wall Street\u2019s volatility index, the Vix, trades below historical norms. So, is today\u2019s market especially volatile? Yes and no. Owen Lamont of Acadian Asset Management compares today\u2019s market to a duck: calm above the surface, but paddling furiously underneath. Lamont calls this market duck \u201cCrazy Legs\u201d. <\/p>\n

Index investors sitting on top have enjoyed a relatively smooth ride, but those holding individual shares are down in the roiling waters below, where the risks and opportunities are much greater.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far\u201d, says Lamont, \u201cCrazy Legs shows no sign of slowing\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can a stock market be simultaneously calm and chaotic? One would be forgiven for thinking things have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,3492,19,3572,17,292],"class_list":["post-628697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-ibm","tag-ie","tag-intel","tag-ireland","tag-nvidia"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117065935989386041","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}