The investment story of the first half of 2026 was straightforward: either an investor owned semiconductor stocks (but not just any semiconductor stocks) or they did not. If one held too little exposure or the wrong names, one simply stood no chance of keeping pace with the market.
Contrary to popular belief, the outperformers were not the leaders in manufacturing the most advanced chips used to train frontier AI models, but rather, the less sophisticated players in the oligopolistic and highly cyclical industry that specialises in the production of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) and other NAND memory chips.
