Chips Snap Historic Skid as Micron, Intel Reclaim Nearly $250 Billion
A $250 Billion Bounce in 60 Chip Stocks
Chip stocks staged a sharp premarket rebound on Oct. 19 after one of the worst routs in years. A Yahoo Finance basket of 60 chip-related stocks recovered nearly $250 billion in market value, with gains spanning memory makers, designers and equipment suppliers. Micron and Intel each rose more than 2%, while SanDisk jumped nearly 5%. Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia and Western Digital joined the move. Yahoo Finance featured the snapback as its Chart of the Day because the strength was so concentrated in semiconductors while most of Wall Street fell.
Futures Rise, but Breadth Stays Narrow
The broader market did not follow chips higher in lockstep. Bloomberg reported Nasdaq 100 futures up about 1.0% and S&P 500 futures up about 0.4% to 0.5% in early New York trading. One market recap put the Nasdaq gain at 0.9%, with fewer than half of U.S. stocks rising. Intraday, AMD gained 4.7%, Micron rose 4.3%, Broadcom added 2.5% and Nvidia gained 0.8%, accounting for much of the index lift. The pattern underscored Monday's split: semiconductors up, most other stocks still struggling.
JPMorgan Upgrade Turns Intel Into the Rally Leader
Intel was among the top gainers. Reuters reported Intel up 4.2% in premarket trading after tumbling more than 14% the prior week. JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur upgraded Intel to Neutral from Underweight, keeping an $85 price target, saying increasing agentic AI workloads, which are CPU-intensive, and very tight supply for leading-edge silicon should support positive earnings revisions. Yahoo Finance added that Intel disclosed an agreement for Tesla to use its forthcoming 14A process as a foundry customer, with its 18A output running ahead of internal targets. The combination of a valuation reset and a customer win helped reframe Intel after a 36% pullback from its June peak.
