(Bloomberg Opinion) — The nothing-burger that came out of the Xi-Trump summit drove home a new reality for global investors. The NACHO trade, which stands for “not a chance Hormuz opens,” is on. Prospects of prolonged inflation have risen, sending global bond yields higher and the US dollar stronger.
This sudden turn of risk sentiment threatens to knock AI stock frenzy off course. Heading into President Donald Trump’s visit to China, the MSCI World Semiconductor Index had rallied 47% this year, as if an energy shortage caused by the Iran war didn’t matter at all. Trump said he didn’t push China’s Xi Jinping to pressure ally Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, disappointing investors who had hoped for a quick resolution over one of oil trade’s most important routes.
Traders are starting to be make comparisons to 1999. The best one-year rolling performance for the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index during the dot-com bubble was 264%. The same metric stands at 135% now. With borrowing costs spiking and global investors clearing their positions to reduce leverage, the fear is that the AI stock boom will quickly implode into dust.
But for bulls who still believe in an AI-fueled industrial supercycle, Asia’s memory chipmakers remain good safe havens. The key reason is earnings.
Asian manufacturers are making the kind of money they’ve never seen before. Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc., which produce high-bandwidth memory chips to pair with Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units, are expected to be among the world’s most profitable companies this year, earning as much as Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. As a result, the pair are still trading at around six times forward earnings, even though their stock prices have more than doubled this year.
Or how about Japanese flash-storage producer Kioxia Holdings Corp., created in 2018 through a spinoff from its scandal-ridden parent Toshiba Corp.? This stock has surged by 19-fold over the last year. Its earnings are nothing short of spectacular, too, with the latest quarterly results surpassing Toyota Motor Corp.’s. The company is quickly shedding debt and morphing into an undisputed profit center. Management is now considering measures to return money to shareholders, including dividends and stock buybacks.
China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., or CXMT, paints a similar picture. In the first quarter, revenue jumped by more than 700% while profit rose to over 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion). This report card decisively turned the chipmaker from a loss-making endeavor into a profitable enterprise. CXMT is pursuing a blockbuster public listing in Shanghai.
Granted, the three listed names are also sought after by momentum chasers, who probably used leverage to juice up their returns. The Roundhill Memory ETF, a highly-concentrated thematic play with the two Korean companies making up almost half of the entire portfolio, already has $8.7 billion inflow since its early April launch, making it the fastest-growing ETF ever. Meanwhile, Kioxia has been a favorite among retail day-traders and hedge funds who played off its elevated stock volatility.
But what makes the Asian chipmakers different from, say, US-listed AI-infrastructure darlings such as Intel Corp. or Arm Holdings Plc, is timing. While the Asian manufacturers are already booking record profits, the investing world is still debating whether Intel can break into the foundry manufacturing business, or if Arm can indeed secure enough suppliers to make central processing unit, or CPU, chips itself.
Now, I’m not saying this party will last forever — the dot-com boom certainly didn’t. Memory chip manufacturing is notoriously cyclical, with customers overstocking in the good years and depleting their inventories before placing new orders during a downturn. The biggest danger for the industry is therefore a precipitous drop in demand.And let’s not forget that a big part of the recent rally, underpinned by analysts’ rosy earnings estimates, is ultimately derived from hyperscalers’ bullish outlooks. During this earnings season, the four biggest US tech firms raised their AI spending to as much as $725 billion this year, a jump from an earlier estimate of $650 billion made before the Iran war began in late February, and a 90% increase from 2025. All bets are off if Big Tech scales back the spending sprees. (The next earnings season will kick off in late July.)
Nonetheless, this is a problem all companies on the AI supply chain have to confront. When the world is this uncertain, and the blockade of a vital passage for global oil supply gets its own acronym, those who can make money now are the winners. Asia’s industrial supercycle isn’t over yet.
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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder.
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