Why the stock market is taking the chip washout in stride
Chipmakers are going through a rough patch, though you wouldn’t know it just by looking at the broader market. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) has plunged nearly 8% over the past week. In Tuesday’s premarket, it dropped another 2%, as a mixed quarterly report from memory chip giant Samsung led investors to pare exposure to the artificial intelligence trade. Micron dropped 6% along with Sandisk . Despite the sharp declines in semis, S & P 500 futures were only down marginally heading into Tuesday’s open. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was poised for a solid gain in early trading. The reason for that may be due to money just moving from one part of the stock market to another, rather than investors getting out entirely. SMH 5D mountain SMH 5-day chart “I think it is more of a rotation, and that’s why we continue to have this index-level volatility be fairly subdued,” Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an interview Tuesday. The Cboe Volatility index (VIX) , known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, traded around 16 on the day. A 20-handle on the VIX tends to signal higher volatility for investors. “When you look at, for instance, implied volatility in semis, or implied volatility in single stocks, [it’s] massive; historically high. You don’t see that because you get the zigging and the zagging, you get that canceling out. However, if you’re on a sectoral basis going into certain places, that’s not going to help you,” she said. “I think the market really now wants to find new leadership, and that new leadership hopefully could mean a broadening of the market,” Silverman said. That new leadership may be forming in so-called old economy stocks. Take a look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average: The 30-stock average has marched to record highs — it topped 53,000 for the first time on Monday — while semis have languished.
