Looking back at the first half of the year in US stocks, chip stocks can be described as supporting half of the US stock market.

In the first half of the year, semiconductor investors made a lot of money:$iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX.US)$A cumulative increase of nearly 29%,$VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH.US)$An increase of nearly 50%.

The semiconductor industry's overall performance in the first half of the year was better than$S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$It also highlights that the industry is currently the biggest beneficiary of the fanatical wave of global companies investing huge sums of money to deploy AI.

Angelo Zino, an analyst at CFRA Research, said: The topic of artificial intelligence continues to be strong. It said it is optimistic about trends in the second half of this year and 2025, and these cyclical themes will also gain momentum for development.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, many investors and analysts expect the chip industry to be brilliant again. According to FactSet statistics, Wall Street is unanimously optimistic about the following 9 companies, including$Micron Technology (MU.US)$,$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$,$Qualcomm (QCOM.US)$,$Broadcom (AVGO.US)$,$Applied Materials (AMAT.US)$,$KLA Corp (KLAC.US)$,$Synopsys (SNPS.US)$,$Cadence Design Systems (CDNS.US)$,$ASML Holding (ASML.US)$.

According to Wall Street's highest target price, Micron Technology is expected to rise to 225 US dollars, with a potential maximum increase of more than 70%; while Nvidia, the “king of AI,” which has increased by 154% this year, is still expected to rise by nearly 59% to 200 US dollars; Qualcomm's potential increase is up to 30%; and Broadcom and Applied Materials are expected to rise by more than 20%.

As Nvidia continues to rise, Wall Street continues to seek other investment opportunities.

Wall Street commercial banking giant Wells Fargo recently released a research report saying that semiconductor equipment giant KLAC.US (KLAC.US) and$Applied Materials (AMAT.US)$Also, lithography machine manufacturer ASML.US (ASML.US) ranks Wells Fargo's most popular semiconductor equipment stocks that are expected to benefit from the AI boom. Wells Fargo said that although the entire semiconductor equipment sector hit a record high, which may lead to a short-term pullback trend and trigger more “difficult” profit expectations and target share price settings, it is still optimistic about the stock price increases of these leaders.

The Bank of America mentioned in the research report that investors are advised to focus on the three major investment themes in the chip industry: cloud computing, automotive chips, and “complexity” (complexity). Among them, in the topic of complexity, Bank of America stated,

The growing complexity of the chip manufacturing sector will fully support the rising valuations of chip manufacturers and semiconductor equipment suppliers, and Asmack, which can be called the “pinnacle of human technology,” as well as semiconductor equipment giants such as Kelei and Applied Materials, undoubtedly also play an important role in the “complexity” investment theme.

The organization Harvest Portfolio Management believes that$Synopsys (SNPS.US)$und$Cadence Design Systems (CDNS.US)$It dominates the field of electronic design automation software. As artificial intelligence becomes more mature and requires more advanced supporting design systems, the two companies' stocks may be boosted.

Goldman Sachs analysts reaffirmed Micron's “buy” rating and raised the target price from $138 to $158. The analyst believes that the fall in stock prices after the release of the earnings report is a good opportunity for investors to buy on dips. It is expected that AI computing and high-bandwidth storage market share will increase, and as Micron shows “supply-side discipline,” earnings per share expectations for this year and next will be raised.

Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said that in addition to increasing demand for memory from artificial intelligence, Micron is also benefiting from various trends such as cloud computing and data centers. AI demand and pricing also support current stock valuations close to the upper limit of their historical book value. The bank believes that

As storage prices improve, we are beginning to overcome the trough of the storage cycle and are likely to gain market share in high-bandwidth storage (expected in 2025).

Cow friends,

Which semiconductor company are you most optimistic about?

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Editor/Somer