The Trump administration has allowed the sale of Nvidia H200 AI accelerators to Chinese companies. Among the recipients are entities linked to individuals on the American blacklist and to military suppliers. The New York Times reported this on the evening of November 9.
The H200 is an Nvidia chip for training AI models. It is precisely around such accelerators that the US has built its export controls on China. The blacklist is a US Commerce Department list. To sell American technology to a company on it, a separate license is required.
This directly concerns traders. Nvidia carries too much weight in American indices for such news to pass by futures unnoticed.
What exactly was allowed?
The approval is broader than usual. Not only chip buyers received permission, but also assemblers of H200-based servers inside the country.
- 600,000 H200 - a batch that is already sitting in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to China
- Five days ago we wrote about this batch: now it has a formal basis
Who made the approved list?
One of the approved assemblers is a company called New Matrix. It was founded 17 months ago and listed an empty office in Beijing as its legal address.
This is what raised questions. According to the NYT, New Matrix may be a front for sanctioned companies.
- Wise Road. A fund to which New Matrix is linked. The US added it to the blacklist in 2024 for helping China gain access to restricted chip manufacturing technologies.
- Li Bin. The founder of Wise Road, he heads Tsinghua Unigroup.
- New H3C. A subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, it was added to the same list back in 2021 due to military ties.
Why does this matter to traders?
Nvidia drags the entire tech block along with it. Through its weight in the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500, it also moves index futures.
- China revenue. Every decision on H200 exports forces the market to recalculate this part of the business
- Political risk. The permission was granted to entities that the US itself had previously shut down
The main point: decisions on chip exports reprice Nvidia, and with it American indices. If you trade indices, check the economic calendar and pick a challenge suited to your market.
Were you holding NVDA when this news came out?
Export decisions arrive at night, and in the morning the Nasdaq futures look completely different. Everyone can see the move. But a percentage on a thousand-dollar account is ten dollars, no matter how precisely you entered. Prop trading removes exactly the size limitation: the company allocates the capital for the trade, you pay for the selection, stay within its loss limits, and take a share of the profit. It makes more sense to understand the scheme before the next such night.