Trends Driving the Semiconductor Market

Students of Industry Analysis may be interested in this. For my January 2012 Industry Analysis course focused on the semiconductor industry, I set up an imaginary portfolio, using only industry analysis macro information. My Wall Street Journal portfolio of 13 semiconductor companies, covered a wide range of application markets, and included Canadian semiconductor company PMC-Sierra. I would NOT recommend this as a serious portfolio strategy due to the highly cyclical and volatile nature of this industry. However, my overall gain over 2 years has been 32.87%. The top gainer, Micron Technologies (296.73%), lost its CEO in a plane crash after I invested but obviously recovered. The other two top gainers, ARM (112.70%), and Texas Instruments (56.71%) are both heavily involved in wireless communication chips.