iShares PHLX Semiconductor

Tech stocks have been on a roll since the start of 2019. The S&P 500 ETF (INDEXSP: INX) has gained 31.4% since January 2019.

Shares of Apple suppliers Qorvo and Skyworks are trading higher today. However, Apple stock is down by 0.4% today. We dig into why this may be.

Tech stocks have been on a roll in 2019. As we get closer to 2020, let’s take a look at the companies to consider for the next year.

AAPL and other tech stocks are trending! Let’s take a look at what drove revised price targets, downgrades, and upgrades for today’s top tech stocks.

Amazon (AMZN) stock has returned 13.9% YTD. In 2019, AMZN is trailing the S&P 500, which has gained 24.3% YTD, as well as the major tech indexes.

This year, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) have risen 19.2% and 35.5%, respectively. What’s driven this rally?

Semiconductor firms Lam Research and KLA Corp. have crushed the markets in 2019. While Lam Research is up 65.4%, KLA has returned 71% year-to-date.

Micron shares fell more than 9% in early market trading today. The stock is trading at $44.09, which is 14% below its 52-week high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average or DJIA fell 0.6% or 159.72 points on Friday, September 20, 2019. The S&P 500 ETF fell 0.54% yesterday.

The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF and the iShares PHLX SOX Semiconductor ETF fell 1.5% and 1.6% on September 3 but recovered the next day.

August was tough for the semiconductor industry and semiconductor ETFs. The stocks fell significantly in early August when the US-China trade war escalated.

Markets made a comeback on Monday. President Trump indicated that China is ready to reconcile. Apparently, China is ready for a trade deal.

Tech and semiconductor stocks have significant exposure to China during this trade war. Investors should expect these stocks to trade lower on Monday.

In the last week or so, major indexes have plunged as the US-China trade war has quickly escalated, leaving investors rattled.

President Trump is back with another threat of tariffs on Chinese imports just a month after the US and China agreed to resume trade talks.

The US is slapping a new 10% tariff on Chinese goods worth $300 billion. Here’s how the additional Trump tariffs will affect tech stocks.

On July 1, we saw several semiconductor stocks rally. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF rose 2.8%, while the iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF rose 4.4% on the day.

The global manufacturing PMI reading for June indicated a contraction in the manufacturing sector.

As my colleague Jitendra Parashar wrote recently, the S&P 500 opened higher today after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin indicated that a deal is 90% done.

Semiconductor stocks have spiraled upwards today. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) is up 4.6% currently, while the iShares PHLX SOX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) is up 4.9%. Though trade war concerns remain, some stocks like NVIDIA might be undervalued due to their recent declines.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released international trade data for April. Both US imports and exports fell 2.2% month-over-month.

On May 16, the US banned American companies from supplying or transferring technology deemed critical for national security to Chinese telecom equipment supplier Huawei.

Monday was yet another bad day for semiconductor stocks.

The semiconductor industry is vulnerable to the US-China (FXI) trade war, as China is one of its key markets.

The US-China trade war has especially affected semiconductor investors, as China is a key market for most US semiconductor companies.

The US-China (FXI) trade war has entered its second year, and things are once again heating up after a cool period.

Donald Trump has reignited trade war tension with China.

The iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) hit a new 52-week high on April 17 due to strong growth in Qualcomm (QCOM) and Intel (INTC).

The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) hit a new 52-week high of $118.83 on April 17, driven by a more-than-20% increase in Qualcomm’s (QCOM) stock and more-than-5% increase in Intel’s (INTC) stock.

The semiconductor sector is set to report its weakest earnings in more than two years.

Major technology stocks, particularly semiconductor stocks, rose on Wednesday amid the wave of optimism about a trade deal between the US and China.

NVIDIA and Applied Materials stock fell 16.8% and 7.3% in the after-hours trading session on November 15.

In the last 80 days, Nvidia stock has fallen 5%, mostly due to no new gaming GPU and the end of the cryptocurrency boom.

On July 10, Charles Schwab (SCHW) presented its forecast for the second half of the year.

After Trump announced that Chinese investments in US tech stocks would be restricted, the Dow Jones Industrial Average spiked downward.

Applied Materials (AMAT) earned 21% of its 2016 revenues and 19% of its 2017 revenues from China. Any major shift in this market could hurt AMAT.

Trade war jitters between the US and China sent Applied Materials stock to $55.40 on March 23 from its 52-week high of $62.40 on March 12.

For the semiconductor industry, 2018 started off with the disclosure of two chip design flaws.

In this series, we’ve learned that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) stock has been moving against the current.

Between March 22 and March 23, 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) fell by ~1,150 points.

Digital assets based on DLT (distributed ledger technology) allows users to initiate and verify their own transactions without any central authority such as banks.

Shorting of bitcoins is currently done through unregulated exchanges. However, given bitcoin’s huge volatility, shorting becomes a risky affair.

Blockchain technology holds a lot of promise due to its many advantages such as transparency, faster transactions at lower costs, and a reliable system.

The founders of bitcoin have set a limit of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined over a period of time. Of those, 16.8 million are already in circulation.

In DLT (distributed ledger technology), details of the transactions are recorded in multiple places called blocks. These blocks are then chained together on a shared network.

Bitcoin and its underlying technology (XLK), blockchain, are interesting concepts that have caught the attention of people all around the world.

The sharp rise and fall in the price of bitcoin are mainly because ownership of the currency is heavily concentrated in just a few hands.

The price of bitcoin (SOXL) (SOXX) has risen 69,278.6% over the last five years. On the other hand, in the last seven days, it has plummeted 27% to $12,466.

Deutsche Bank is planning to use blockchain technology in currency settlement, trade processing, and derivative contracts.

Before updating data on a blockchain, users must agree about the veracity of the transaction through a process called consensus.

Despite the higher number of transactions that need to be updated regularly by users, the transaction capacity is intentionally kept very low by the bitcoin founders.

The semiconductor market witnessed strong growth in 2017, as the world witnessed the beginning of the fourth technology shift toward AI and IoT.

In the bitcoin world, mining involves investing a lot of capital in computer hardware and competing with fellow miners to solve a complex mathematical problem.

On July 5, 2016, shares of Apple’s suppliers, including Skyworks Solutions, Qorvo, and Cirrus fell over concerns about the iPhone.

Cypress Semiconductors (CY) has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. It rose by 10.5% to close at $10.55 per share on June 30, 2016.

Samsung will reveal the 10nm mobile DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) “in the near future.” The memory is 30% faster and uses 20% less power.

The spot price of 2GB DDR3 DRAM fell 0.94% from $0.96 on March 25 to $0.95 on April 5, 2016. The spot price of 4GB DDR 3 DRAM fell 1.3% from $1.65 to $1.63.

The iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) tracks the performance of 30 publicly listed companies in the semiconductor sector.

The spot price of 2GB DDR3 (double data rate 3) DRAM fell 3.4% from $1.11 on January 22, 2016, to $1.07 on February 12, 2016.

Marvell’s stock fell sharply last year as Glancy Prongay & Murray (or GPM) announced its investigation of potential claims on behalf of Marvell’s investors.

Analog announced that it expects its revenue in fiscal 1Q16 to be $745–$765 million due to weaker demand in its portable consumer business segment.

The contract price of 32 GB NAND has fallen 4.7% from $1.69 to $1.61, whereas the contract price of 64 GB NAND has fallen 1.8% from $2.19 to $2.15.

As of the end of December 2015, Micron Technology has generated YTD returns of -59%, compared to 61% in 2014.

In the trailing one month, fund outflows for SOXX were -$21.6 million. In the trailing 12 months, net fund inflows were -$225.1 million.

SOXX generated 21.6% in the trailing-three-year period and 11.5% in the trailing-five-year period.

Toshiba is set to structurally reform its Visual Product business segment by reducing its employee headcount from 4,800 to 1,100 by the end of fiscal 2016.

Toshiba stated THAT it plans to concentrate on cash flow in planning its mid-term business plans, budget, business performance management, and evaluation.

Samsung has started mass production of 3D-NAND flash memory and has gradually increased its market share in this segment.

DDR4 (double data rate 4) has been consistently gaining market share in overall DRAM (dynamic random access memory) production.

DRAMeXchange forecasts DRAM consumption in China to reach $12 billion at the end of fiscal 2015. It expects NAND flash consumption to reach $6.7 billion in the same period.

Samsung’s (SSNLF) revenues increased 2.3% QoQ, from $5.1 billion in 2Q15 to $52.7 billion in 3Q15. Its market share also increased from 45.1% to 46.7% in the same period.

Mobile DRAM revenues in 3Q5 increased 18% QoQ (quarter-over-quarter). Demand in this segment was driven by an increase in shipments of LPDDR4 for the iPhone 6s.

Samsung’s market share for the quarter was 45.2%, a gain of 1.1 percentage point YoY compared to 2Q14. It was Samsung’s best ever quarterly performance.

Samsung and SK Hynix’s combined share of the global 8GB DRAM market is greater than the total DRAM market. Samsung has a market share of 45%, while SK Hynix’s market share is 28%.

Smartphones may soon become the major revenue-generating source in the mobile DRAM market. It’s driven by increased demand for high memory in smartphone devices.

On October 5, 2015, Skyworks Solutions announced that it is looking to acquire peer company PMC-Sierra for $2 billion in cash.

Nvidia manufactures graphics processing units (or GPUs) used in PC gaming and Tegra processors used in mobile devices, tablets, and automotive applications.

The combined KLA-Tencor and Lam Research expect to realize $250 million in cost synergies within the next 18 to 24 months of the acquisition.

Gross margin for KLA-Tencor (KLAC) in 1Q16 was ~58.0%. Its cash-to-debt ratio in was 0.75x, lower than the industry median of 1.75x.

KLA-Tencor constitutes ~2.4% of the iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and 0.84% of the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH).

In the past 12 months, Lam Research’s revenue growth per share, EBITDA, and free cash flow rose by 12.8%, 0.8%, and 2.5%, respectively.

Huge investment is required at every stage of semiconductor development to make smaller-sized chips in a cost-effective manner without compromising on functionality.

JAT Capital sold its position in SanDisk Corporation (SNDK) in 4Q14. The position had represented 1.2% of the fund’s third-quarter portfolio.

Point72 reduced its position in Micron Technology. It sold 4,792,200 shares during 4Q14. The shares accounted for 0.28% of the fund’s total 4Q14 portfolio.

Cloud storage has opened up a plethora of opportunities for SanDisk, as cloud storage is completely dependent on flash drives to be super fast.

Although high-end smartphones and tablets will bring significant revenues for SanDisk, the company expects the SSD division to benefit more than its embedded segment will.

In September 2014, SanDisk (SNDK) released the Extreme Pro SDXC memory card, which is the world’s first Secure Digital card with storage of 512 gigabytes of data.

In its 3Q14 quarterly results, AMD management announced its new restructuring plan that it expects to implement primarily in 4Q14.

Thanks to console design wins and differentiated GPU (graphics processing unit) technology, AMD’s graphics segment has experienced growth.

In 3Q14, AMD’s computing and graphics segment reported a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year decline in its revenues of 6% and 16%, respectively.

Advanced Micro Devices’ 3Q14 revenues and non-GAAP EPS were $1.43 billion and $0.03 per share, respectively.

In accordance with its mobile strategy in 2010, Intel acquired McAfee for ~ $7.7 billion. Intel acquired McAfee with the intent of integrating its security solutions into Intel-manufactured chips.

Samsung is expected to initiate manufacturing of DRAM wafers by the end of 2014, with a focus on PC DRAM. In the second half of 2015, its maximum S3 DRAM capacity is expected to reach 60,000 per month.

A change in Microchip Technology’s revenue forecasts Microchip Technology Inc. (MCHP) revised its revenue projection downward for this quarter to $546 million. The earlier revenue forecast for the current quarter was $560 million–$575 million. The revised forecast is ~3.7% lower than the average of the company’s previous guidance. Microchip Technology’s results and announcements are roughly considered […]

As of 2Q14, AMD earned ~40% of its revenue from the high growth markets. It wants to generate ~50% of its revenue from the high-end markets in the future.

Dense servers are part of the computing segment. They’re mainly used in data centers. When they’re compared to traditional servers, they improve space efficiency for data centers.

In 2014, AMD plans to launch two new high-performance AMD (AMD) embedded R-series processor families—the Hierofalcon and the Bald Eagle.

In September 2013, AMD (AMD) announced its plan for the embedded computing market. It offered ARM and x86 processors. AMD catered to the rapid changes in the technology market.

SanDisk (SNDK) is keen to increase the contribution of client SSDs to its total revenues as it offers a stable pricing environment and high margins.