04/24 Nasdaq leads gains in semiconductors amid CPU revaluation from Intel and focus on options supply and demand
After Intel (+23.60%) announced its earnings, the U.S. stock market surged, driving the market’s gains, led by semiconductor companies related to CPU and AI reasoning. Furthermore, there are positive factors such as a surge in option trading centered on semiconductor companies as the Weekly option expires. In addition, expectations for the talks were highlighted by Iran’s foreign minister’s visit to Pakistan and Trump’s dispatch of Special Envoy for Witkov. However, most of them except for semiconductor companies and some of the large technology stocks were differentiated, showing limited fluctuations and weaknesses. As a result, Nasdaq and S&P 500 continued to hit record highs, but Dow ended with a falling mixed trend (-0.16%; Nasdaq +1.63%; S&P 500 +0.80%; Russell 2000 +0.43%, Philadelphia Semiconductor Index +4.32%)
*Variants: Intel and Options Market Power, U.S.-Iran Expectations
The key point of the market’s attention after the Intel (+23.60%) earnings announcement is that demand for AI infrastructure is spreading from GPU to CPU and inference server areas rather than performance numbers themselves. Intel’s sales in the data center and AI sectors surged, suggesting that demand for server CPUs is getting stronger in the actual service stage after learning AI models. In particular, with the proliferation of agent-type AI, CPU and GPU are more efficient than just GPUs for searching, e-mail classification, automatic execution, and enterprise workloads. As a result, not only Intel but also stocks that include CPU-related contents are seeing a significant increase
In terms of supply and demand, the surge was amplified by supply and demand, such as the expiration of Weekly Options and Zero Day Options. Option transactions with Intel increased by about four times compared to the average, with call options accounting for about 73%. In particular, short-term maturity of $80 and $85 call options on May 1st were concentrated, creating a gamma squeeze structure in which market makers had to purchase additional stocks as the stock price approached the price range. At the same time, short covering by investors with short selling balances expanded the stock price increase, and the funds circulated to CPU-related stocks. In other words, the move was not just an earnings response, but a theme-based supply and demand market where leverage funds were concentrated on CPU industry revaluation expectations.
Amid this development, news has been reported that Iran’s foreign minister will visit Pakistan, Oman and Russia. The U.S. announced that the visit was not for U.S.-Iran negotiations, but was part of a mission to convey Iran’s official position to end the war. However, U.S. President Trump announced that he would send Witkov and Kushner, and the market is looking forward to the U.S.-Iran meeting. In fact, the White House spokesman said that the two will depart and that it has shifted to a diplomatic step because it was at Iran’s request. However, considering the travel time between the two countries, it is unlikely that the meeting will take place in Pakistan, but the market believes that negotiations will take place, shifting international oil prices to a lower level, weakening the dollar, and the U.S. market to a rise in technology stocks
*Featured stocks: Intel, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, among others. Vs. Apple, Oracle, Eli Lilly fall
Semiconductor: Nvidia Up Vs. Broadcom Relatively Slump
Nvidia (+4.32%) is expected to increase Intel’s expectations that expanding demand for data center CPUs in the AI era will also lead to direct opportunities for Nvidia. The market confirmed through Intel’s performance that CPU importance is growing due to inference and the spread of agent-type AI. Nvidia is also already supplying Grace CPUs and is pushing for large-scale deployment plans for next-generation Vera CPUs in 2027 along with Meta. In other words, the increase in CPU demand is not just a favorable factor for Intel, but a surge in the value of Nvidia’s integrated platform that provides Blackwell GPUs, Grace/Vera CPUs, and NVLink networks. Furthermore, the strong inflow of supply and demand is also due to the rapid increase in option trading. Broadcom (+0.67%) reflects the marginalization of customized AI issues and the relatively small put/call ratio, although there are many calls, the profit-taking sales, and ASIC expectation shelf management, reflecting the relatively sluggish performance
Semiconductors: Intel surges on extreme gains centered on call options after earnings report
Intel (+23.60 percent) saw a surge in call option transactions after the announcement of earnings. In addition, the fact that the company mentioned in the conference call that the existing stock chips are being sold due to surging demand for AI-related products is expected to increase significantly as Generative AI goes beyond learning to provide reasoning and agent-type services. As a result, CPU-related companies such as AMD (+13.91 percent) and ARM (+14.76 percent) increased significantly. ARM is also affected by the drastic increase in call option transactions with Intel as its put-to-call ratio is 0.27 times. Qualcomm (+11.12 percent) also saw a surge in market share of PC CPUs and AI devices, as well as supply and demand factors such as surge in option transactions. Philadelphia’s semiconductor index rose 4.32 percent
Semiconductor Storage, Equipment: Rising on Continued Growth Expectations and More
Micron (+3.11 percent) and SanDisk (+6.16 percent) are seeing their price-determining power maximized as demand for high-performance DRAM and enterprise SSDs loaded per server surged due to advanced AI services, and supply shortages became a reality. Ram Research (+3.57%) posted its biggest quarterly sales ever, rising after the company said demand for AI equipment will be strong until next year. Other equipment companies such as AMAT (+3.25 percent) and ASML (+2.81 percent) also rose. TSMC (+5.17 percent) rose sharply due to favorable factors such as Taiwan’s financial authorities’ policy to ease investment limits (increase individual investment limits for stocks from 10 percent to 25 percent).
power semiconductors, power grids: mixed appearance
Power semiconductor companies and power grid-related companies such as Onsemi Conductors (+0.63%), Monolosic Power (+2.51%), Texas Instruments (-1.80%), Big Cor (+5.15%), Wolfspeed (+13.36%), Alpha & Omega (+11.46%), Vistra (+4.78%), and Constellation Energy (+7.09%) have continued to sell and power system-related companies following recent gains