BlackRock's SOXX chip ETF falls into bear market, down 28% from June peak
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
BlackRock's SOXX semiconductor ETF closed at $471.51 on Oct 30, down 28.1% from its June peak of $656.
The fund is roughly twice as volatile as the broad market.
Background
SOXX is the iShares Semiconductor ETF, sponsored and managed by BlackRock, holding about 30 US-listed chipmakers such as AMD, Micron and Nvidia. Launched in 2001, it is market-cap weighted with the top five holdings capped at 8% and the rest at 4%, charges a 0.33% annual expense ratio and holds roughly $43-46 billion in net assets. It is roughly twice as volatile as the broad market, because chipmakers add capacity when demand is strong, often leading to oversupply and falling prices later. The October slide is traced to a Cryptobriefing report that chip and memory stocks tumbled after a single OpenAI revenue figure came in well below what the market had modeled.
How it unfolded
- Jul 10, 2001The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) launches, sponsored by BlackRock/iShares.
- Jun 2021SOXX stops tracking the SOX index and begins tracking the NYSE Semiconductor Index.
- Jun 22, 2026SOXX hits an all-time high of $655.95.
- Jul 8, 2026SOXX takes in more than $5.4 billion in a single session, out of $18.6 billion in total US ETF inflows that day.
- Oct 29, 2026SOXX records net buying of $212.3 million, adding 29 positions and selling out of none; largest buys are AMD ($22.0 million), MU ($17.8 million) and NVDA ($17.7 million). Assets under management reach $43.67 billion.
- Oct 29, 2026 (evening)Intel reports third-quarter results; its shares rise about 7.7% the next day.
- Oct 30, 2026SOXX closes at $471.51, down 28.1% from its June peak and into a technical bear market, losing 8.24% that day as the Nasdaq Composite drops 3%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falls 7.20% as a major chipmaker drops 28.58%.
- Nov 2, 2026The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falls 3.37%, weighing on SOXX.
- Nov 3, 2026The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index climbs 2.63% to 10,600.4 with all 30 constituents higher; SOXX rises about 2.5%. South Korea's Kospi falls 3.6%, led lower by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
- Nov 3, 2026 (after close)AMD reports revenue of USD 13.38 billion, up 45%, and guides fourth-quarter revenue to about USD 17 billion.
- Nov 4, 2026SOXX trades at $450.41 in the regular market, down 14.59 (-3.14%); total assets $43,666,825,216; 52-week range $260.44-$655.95.
- Nov 5, 2026BlackRock's 3-for-1 SOXX share split takes effect.
Key terms
- ETF
- An investment fund that is bought and sold on stock exchanges and holds assets such as stocks, bonds or commodities.
- bear market
- A downward market trend in which prices fall over a period of time.
- market-cap weighted
- Describing an index whose components are weighted by each company's total market value of outstanding shares.
Source: Wikipedia
Who’s saying what
- Analysts
- Morgan Stanley chief US equity strategist Mike Wilson expects the semiconductor correction to near its final stages around mid-November, with potential downside of 10%-15% for the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index and support possibly near 9,500 points.
- Analysts
- Goldman Sachs warns that slowing AI investment growth could weaken chipmakers' earnings.
- Analysts
- Beinsure lays out SOXX scenarios of $400-$425 bearish, $460-$500 base case and $520-$540 potential recovery, explicitly labeled analytical scenarios rather than bank price targets.
- Caution
- Kalkine says the 2.63% gain repaired only part of the damage from October 30 and November 2, and the realistic reading is a volatile base forming, not a finished recovery.
- Analysts
- Startup Fortune argues the October 30 selloff was not about Intel but about whether the hundreds of billions hyperscalers pour into AI infrastructure will ever show up as profit.
Still unverified
Whether the 2.63% bounce will last is presented as an open question, with memory costs, weak PC demand and hedge fund selling cited as obstacles; Beinsure's price scenarios are explicitly labeled analytical scenarios, not investment bank price targets.