Semi Canary Still Chirping, But He’s Gonna Croak In 2018

Since January 2013 we have been using the worldwide Semiconductor Equipment industry as a leader within the Semiconductor sector, which is an economic cyclical leader itself. That month we noted a positive move in Equipment bookings, which became a (3 month) trend that spring. This trend was used to project positive economic signals to come.

Through some turbulence in 2014 and 2015 the sector has remained on ‘economic up’ along with our cross reference indicator, the Palladium/Gold ratio right up to the current time as the economic Canary in a Coal Mine has kept on chirping.

But on November 21, two days before the sector topped I derisively poked at the mainstream media for hyping the Semiconductor Equipment sector with its bold headline… Fund manager looks beyond ‘FAANG’ stocks and finds even bigger winners for 2018. Talk about eyeball harvesting and greed stimulation.

The goofy article highlighted a fund manager who’s likely never dirtied his expensive shoes on a factory floor going on about how he has found value in the likes of Applied Materials and Lam Research. I gave a rebuttal per the link above and noted the reasons why this rosy scenario was unlikely to play out in 2018 for the cycle leading Semi sector and its sub-sector leader, the Fab Equipment companies.

So what do we have now? Why, in checks a real source of industry news (unlike the completely abstracted financial media crap we as investors are routinely subjected to) with affirmation of our November 21 viewpoint.

Still Growing But at a Slowing Pace

To review, in 2013 we projected Semi Equipment ? Semi ? broader Manufacturing ? Employment and it has played out that way over time and through much media drama and noise. But now the pace of a cyclical leader is slowing… even as the world stokes up on reflation (AKA fiscally stimulated inflation) and it all appears as good as it gets.

That is key. In Q4 2012 market players were embroiled in the Fiscal Cliff drama as my brother in law (a financial adviser) told me at Thanksgiving how the best and brightest fund managers were hording cash in expectation of a negative market event coming that December due to said Fiscal Cliff. My grunted response (which to this day I wish I’d had ‘all in’ conviction about) was “bullish”. That was the sentiment end of it, and the next month saw the Semi signals start coming in. The rest is history.