Chip ETF Wobbles as ASML's Upbeat Orders Collide With a Crowded-Trade Warning
Published on 10/14/2026 at 15:33 | Editorial boerse-global.de
The VanEck Semiconductor UCITS ETF is navigating choppy waters this week, caught between reassuring signals from Europe's biggest chip-equipment maker and a mounting sense that the sector's red-hot run has left it dangerously exposed.
At the center of the tug-of-war sits ASML, which unveiled third-quarter results on Wednesday showing net sales of EUR 11.7 billion and net profit of EUR 5.0 billion. The Dutch group guided for fourth-quarter revenue of EUR 14.2 billion to EUR 15.2 billion, and for full-year 2026 it projects sales of EUR 44 billion to EUR 45 billion. Perhaps more telling for the sector's longer arc, management said customers have already signaled interest in placing equipment orders for 2029 and 2030 — a hint that capital spending on chip production may hold up well beyond the current cycle, easing fears that AI-driven demand could fade prematurely.
Six Straight Sessions of Losses
Yet the fund's recent tape tells a less comforting story. Tuesday marked the sixth consecutive session of declines for the ETF, putting it on course for its longest losing streak since May 2025. Over those six sessions, the sector shed more than 8% of its value. The retreat had little to do with any single headline; instead, investors are wrestling with broad uncertainty over how future AI infrastructure will be financed.
Even after the pullback, the ETF closed Tuesday at EUR 97.14, still up 82% since the start of the year. By Wednesday it had slipped to EUR 96.15, a drop of 0.9% from the prior day, though it remains 1.4% above its 50-day moving average of EUR 94.84 — a level that had stood at EUR 94.77 a day earlier, when the fund was trading 2.5% above it.
The Most Crowded Trade on the Street
A Bank of America survey of 161 institutional fund managers overseeing a combined USD 453 billion in assets lays bare the tension. Long positions in global semiconductor stocks are currently viewed as the market's most overcrowded trade, with roughly 45% of respondents calling the positioning extremely concentrated — a setup that amplifies vulnerability to sharp swings.
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Doubts about near-term profitability are compounding the unease. Analysts at Mizuho cautioned that AI investments may now be outpacing the free cash flow of many companies, while tighter conditions in debt financing threaten to weigh on spending for chips and related infrastructure. Jeffrey Favuzza of Jefferies flagged Anthropic's investor day as another source of uncertainty, pointing to lofty expectations for annual recurring revenue north of USD 80 billion.
Asia Offers a Counterweight
Not every signal pointed lower. Asian trading venues stabilized on Wednesday, with Samsung Electronics climbing 2.4%, according to Reuters — a welcome counterweight to weakness in U.S. chip names, where heavyweights like NVIDIA gave up only modest ground while memory specialists such as Micron fell sharply.
Sentiment also took a hit from Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, whose warnings about speculative AI investment rattled confidence, and from reports days earlier that China's CXMT had made technological strides toward a denser DRAM architecture — stoking worries about fiercer competition in memory chips.
Long-Term Bets Stay Bold
Against that nervous backdrop, the sector's longer-term vision remains decidedly bullish. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, told an industry gathering Tuesday that the market for data-center AI accelerators could approach USD 1.5 trillion by 2030, with inference — running trained AI models — accounting for roughly 60% of that total. Dan Ives of Wedbush called the recent selloff overdone relative to sector fundamentals, citing a 13:1 demand-to-supply ratio for semiconductors.
The immediate test comes with the quarterly reports now landing. ASML opened its books Wednesday, and TSMC follows Thursday — both seen as pivotal for confidence in the AI trade. ASML reportedly plans to lift capacity for Low-NA EUV machines from about 65 units this year to 85 by 2027, with analysts projecting roughly 28% revenue growth for 2027.
Hanging over it all is the cost of money. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries has recently topped 5%, making it pricier to finance large data-center projects. By some estimates, that could delay or scuttle 5% to 10% of planned builds — leaving investors to weigh whether this year's outsized gains can be justified by the earnings reports still to come.
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