Semiconductor stocks are shares in the companies that design, manufacture and equip the chip industry. Chips sit inside almost everything now, and the AI build-out has made the sector one of the market's most watched — and most volatile. It is deeply cyclical: the same names that lead a rally tend to fall hardest when demand turns. Below, our model ranks every US-listed semiconductor stock by score and momentum, updated after each close.
The designers — NVIDIA and Qorvo — own the architecture but outsource production. The foundries such as TSMC actually make the chips, for their own customers' designs; that is a capital-intensive business with entirely different economics. The memory makers like Micron and SK Hynix sell a commodity whose price swings hard with supply. Add the equipment and packaging suppliers — Advantest and ASE — and you have four business models under one heading.
The cycle. Chip demand overshoots and undershoots. Capacity ordered in a boom arrives in a slump, and prices fall accordingly. That pattern has repeated for decades.
Where the spending goes. AI accelerators, phones, cars and industrial chips are separate markets. A company can be at a peak in one while another shrinks — which is why two chip stocks can move in opposite directions on the same day.
Export rules and geography. Much of the world's advanced capacity sits in a small number of places, and export restrictions can change what a company is allowed to sell and to whom.
Expectations, priced early. The sector often prices in growth well before it shows up in earnings.
A designer owns the blueprint and has someone else build it; a foundry owns the factories and builds to other companies' designs. They face very different risks: the designer competes on architecture, the foundry on capital, yield and utilisation of extremely expensive plants.
Because the industry is cyclical and the costs are largely fixed. When demand rises, most of the extra revenue drops through to profit — and when it falls, the profit disappears just as quickly. Expectations for future demand get priced in early, which amplifies the swings in both directions.
No. NVIDIA designs accelerators and sells into the AI build-out; Micron sells memory, which is closer to a commodity with a price set by supply and demand. They can be at completely different points of their own cycles at the same time.
After every close. Score, momentum and price targets are recalculated automatically, so the order always reflects the latest trading day.