SMH holds 25 chip stocks, and the top five are almost half the fund. This page looks underneath the index: how many holdings are trending, how many are making new highs, whether more are rising than falling, whether the average stock is keeping up with the index, and how much of the return came from the biggest names. Then the price chart with the dealer gamma levels that shape SMH's short-term moves.
The state of SMH in one paragraph. Updated Friday 30 October before the open, with Thursday's close and Thursday's preliminary open interest. The test was passed on the day and overrun overnight. Thursday SMH opened at $558.93, traded down to $555.50, within fifty cents of the $555 put cluster, bounced to $565.87 and closed $561.67 (−1.1%) on 6.0 million shares while Alphabet fell 12.6% and Marvell 13%: the dealers defended the level exactly where Wednesday's open interest said they would. On that close the scorecard reads six of ten, forming: the shelf held, 36% of holdings above their 20-day, the McClellan oscillator back above zero (+5, +12 in five days), no new 52-week lows, Lam and Applied above their five-day lows, memory (Micron, SanDisk, SK hynix) +17% on the week; what is missing is a reversal candle, Nvidia and TSMC back above their 50-day averages, and a close above the $580 call gamma. Then Amazon reported: AWS +39% to $46 billion, guided above 40% for 2027 and 2028, and the stock fell 7% on $75.9 billion of quarterly capex and −$33.5 billion of free cash flow; Intel guided the fourth quarter $1–2 billion light and fell 26%. The chips took the cost side of it again: pre-market AMD −8%, Micron −5%, Broadcom −4%, Nvidia −3%, and SMH is indicated at $536 (−4.6%), which is the $536–540 shelf reclaimed on Monday. Thursday's open interest (preliminary; the final revision comes around 09:30 New York) prices the book at $536 at −$547 million per 1%, with the flip at $562.8, the put wall at $530 and the nearest call gamma at $580: below the flip dealers sell as the index falls, so the gap opens into a market with no natural buyer until the $530 strike, and below that the 22 October low at $520.53. The structure for today: a close back above $538 keeps the failed-breakdown reading and the scorecard roughly where they are, the shelf having been tested from above on a hyperscaler's print rather than on chip news; a close under $538 removes the shelf row, the breadth rows follow within days, and the next supports are $530 and $520. The paradox worth holding onto: the capex the market punished Alphabet and Amazon for ($51 billion and $76 billion in one quarter) is this fund's revenue, and both confirmed demand (Cloud +103%, AWS +39%, "growth above 40% in 2027 and 2028"); what equity holders are now pricing is that the spending gets cut, and that argument is settled by Nvidia on 17 November and the hyperscalers' 2027 guides in January, not today. For a put seller the premium has reopened: strikes under $520, December or later, and no report inside the expiry unless the premium is explicitly for it. Apple reports Monday, AMD and Arista on 3 November. Update, 09:52 New York: SMH opened at $532.58, printed $529.34 and trades $531 (−5.4%), under the $538 shelf and on the $530 put wall, while Amazon recovered to −1.7% within twenty minutes; the shelf row of the scorecard goes red on a close here, and the $530 strike is the last large put under the price before $520. Update, Friday afternoon New York: SMH trades $518 (−7.8%), through the 22 October capitulation low of $520.53, with the equipment and memory names down 8–12%; re-priced at that level the dealer book is −$656 million per 1% with the flip at $544 and the put wall now $505 (the tiles and the gamma chart show Thursday's open interest at Friday's price). The reversal reading is void until a close back above $538; the scorecard's shelf row goes red at today's close and the breadth rows will follow. The next supports are the $505 strike and the March–April base. Monday 2 November, pre-open: Friday closed $522.49 (−7.0%); the scorecard is 3 of 10 (not yet), the book −$391 million per 1% with the flip at $558 and the put wall at $500 on Thursday's open interest. AMD (−11% Friday) reports Tuesday after the close.
| Signal | Now | What green needs | Status |
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Blue candles closed up, red down (Yahoo daily bars). Orange dashed: the call wall (strike with the most call gamma above the price), put wall (most put gamma below) and gamma flip (below it the dealer book turns short gamma), from CBOE open interest across all SMH expiries.
Dollars of SMH dealers must buy or sell per 1% move, by strike (price on the vertical axis, like the candle chart). Blue: gamma from calls (dealers long, they lean against moves); red: gamma from puts (dealers short, they chase moves); black: the net of the two at each strike. Dashed black: today's SMH price. Hover for the strike and gamma at the cursor.
Dealers are net short about of gamma per 1% move ( in the next 35 days), all of it from puts struck between $550 and $605. The gamma flip at is now 7% above the price, the call wall has moved down to (the strikes above it have lost their gamma as the index fell away), and the put wall at is the last large put strike before $500–520. In negative gamma dealers chase the move: a break of $550 is sold into and can extend quickly; a recovery through $560–575 is bought back just as fast. Friday's monthly expiry removes a large share of these puts, which is the mechanical reason this regime often ends at an expiry. Positioning uses Tuesday's open interest; Wednesday's arrives mid-morning New York time.
Gamma comes from end-of-day open interest and a sign convention (dealers long customers' sold calls, short customers' bought puts); it shifts after each expiry, most of all the monthly ones (16 October, 20 November).
The classic breadth gauge. Above 70% on the 200-day is a healthy bull market; the 50-day swings faster and often turns before the index (a falling line while SMH rises is a negative divergence). The surge from 8% above the 50-day on 14 September to 100% on 6 October was a breadth thrust; it has unwound to 48% in five sessions, which is a washout, not a divergence: the index fell with it.
Solid: share of holdings. Dashed: share of SMH's weight. When the weighted line sits well above the count, the big names are in better shape than the typical stock; that is still the case ( of weight above the 50-day against of names): Nvidia, TSMC, AMD and Marvell held their 50-day through the week while the equipment and memory names lost theirs.
Bars: holdings closing at a new 52-week high (up) or low (down) each day. Line: share within 5% of their 52-week high. Healthy advances show a steady stream of new highs; there have been almost none since the summer, while SMH itself rallied, because most holdings are still well below their June–July peaks.
Running total of holdings up minus holdings down each day. If SMH makes a new high while this line does not, fewer stocks are carrying the index.
The 19-day minus the 39-day exponential average of daily net advances (as a share of names trading). Above zero, short-term breadth momentum is rising; a cross below zero after a thrust marks momentum rolling over; readings below about −10, as in late July and mid-September, have marked short-term washouts. It is now.
Both rebased to 100 a year ago, rebuilt from the holdings' daily returns. A rising equal ÷ cap line means the average chip stock is beating the giants (broad rally); a falling one means the giants are carrying the index. Over the year the average stock won; over the last three months the giants did (equal-weight versus cap-weight), and in the sell-off week the two fell together.
Share of holdings with the 50-day above the 200-day (the slow trend), and with a 14-day RSI above 70 (overbought) or below 30 (oversold). Washouts (many below 30) tend to mark lows; clusters above 70 mark extended rallies. Today no holding is above 70 and only SK hynix is below 30: the pullback has removed the froth without yet reaching an oversold extreme.
The top five holdings are of SMH and Nvidia alone is ; the "effective number" of stocks (one over the sum of squared weights) is , so SMH behaves like a portfolio of about 13 equal positions, not 25.
Year to date the gains are still broad: AMD, Micron, Marvell, Nvidia and TSMC each added 3.5–4.7 percentage points and the top five supplied under half of the 42-point return. Over three months the holdings are down 4% in total: Nvidia, Marvell, Synopsys, AMD and Analog Devices added about 2.3 points between them while SK hynix (−1.4 points), Applied Materials, KLA, Broadcom and Lam took away 5; the five largest detractors explain more than the whole net loss, which is what the concentration card shows. The rally narrowed to AI compute and custom silicon in the summer and that is now where the selling is: memory (SK hynix is 56% below its high after a 24% week, Micron 28%) and the equipment makers (Applied Materials and KLA 43–45% below their peaks) are in full bear markets. Over one month only the analog and design names are positive (Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Synopsys, Cadence), and the equal-weighted line is ahead of the fund by because the large AI names fell most in the last week.
For a large SMH holder: the fund's risk is dominated by Nvidia, TSMC and the AI-compute names, and this week they cracked too (Nvidia and TSMC through their 50-day averages, AMD −13%, Marvell −17%), which is why SMH fell faster than the breadth numbers alone would suggest. The turn will show first in the equal-weighted line and in the share of holdings above the 20-day average, which cannot go lower than Friday's zero.
| Holding | Weight | Trend | 1W | 1M | 3M | YTD | vs 50d | vs 200d | From 52w high | RSI | 3M contrib. |
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Trend: Leader above the 50- and 200-day and within 5% of its 52-week high; Uptrend above both averages; Pullback above the 200-day but below the 50-day; Recovering above the 50-day but still below the 200-day; Downtrend below both. 3M contribution is the holding's weight three months ago times its return, in percentage points of SMH's return. SK hynix is measured on its Seoul listing (KRW).
Holdings and share counts: stockanalysis.com (as of ), 25 holdings. Daily prices: Yahoo Finance, two years, aligned to SMH's trading calendar (closes carried over local holidays). Weights through time are rebuilt from today's weights and each holding's price path, so cap-weighted measures move with the market rather than freezing today's mix. Moving averages are simple; RSI is Wilder's 14-day; a new high is a close at or above the highest close of the prior 252 sessions. McClellan uses ratio-adjusted net advances ((advancers − decliners) ÷ (advancers + decliners) × 100). Equal- and cap-weighted indices are rebuilt from daily returns (cap-weighted tracks SMH closely but ignores fees and rebalancing). Dealer gamma: CBOE delayed chain, recomputed with Black-Scholes, built .
Scorecard thresholds: above the 200-day ≥70% green, ≤40% red; above the 50-day ≥60% / ≤40%; above the 20-day ≥60% / ≤40%; within 5% of a high ≥40% / ≤15%; equal- minus cap-weighted over 3 months ≥0 / ≤−5%; top-five share of the 3-month return ≤60% / ≥100%; RSI above 70 ≤30% / ≥60%; gamma regime positive / negative. These are conventions for a 25-stock index, not optimised signals. The prose is written for the date shown; the charts and tiles update when the page is rebuilt (uv run python -m options_scanner.smh_breadth).