Semiconductor stocks were up on Thursday after largely having slipped this last month. Nvidia NVDA was up over 2.0% at the time of writing. Advanced Micro Devices AMD was up over 0.5%. Taiwan Semiconductor TSM was up 0.2%. The lone drop came from Intel INTC, which shed 0.15%.

Fed Decision

The moves came in large part due to relief at the news that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) did not intend to raise rates and is still open to lowering them before the year is out. This was mostly expected, but some feared that disappointing inflation numbers would lead the FOMC to raise rates or indicate there was little hope of any reduction in the near future.

The semiconductor industry, a high-growth sector, responded well to the news. Typically, investors are scared away from high-growth equities in high-interest rate environments.

The Fed reiterated that its target for considering reducing interest rates would be 2% inflation. All eyes will be on numbers coming May 15.

Solid Earnings

In addition to the FOMC decision, Qualcomm QCOM reported earnings on Wednesday. The company largely beat Wall Street’s expectations; it reported EPS of $2.44 vs the expected $2.32 and revenue of $9.39 billion vs the expected $9.34 billion. The strong numbers gave the company’s stock a nearly 10% bump today and indicated a strong market for the entire sector, leading to bleed over in other semiconductor stocks.

Investing In The Space

Investors looking to get into the space can do their due diligence and pick individual equities. However, many investors would do well to consider a semiconductor-focused ETF instead like the iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX. The fund invests in a diversified set of companies involved in the space, such as NVIDIA and AMD.

And for investors who want to take their view even further, Direxion offers the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares SOXL which seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, of 300% of the performance of the NYSE Semiconductor Index.

For the bears, who think Semis are overvalued and a correction is imminent, Direxion also offers the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bear 3X Shares SOXS which seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, of 300% of the inverse of the performance of the NYSE Semiconductor Index.

Featured photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash