Here's a funny thing about markets: sometimes the thing that's supposed to hurt you ends up helping you. Take the Iran war. When conflict erupted in the Strait of Hormuz back in February, the immediate worry was about oil prices, supply chains, and global growth. Tech stocks, with their sensitivity to interest rates and economic confidence, were supposed to be in the crosshairs.
Instead, semiconductor stocks have become the surprise outperformers of the whole mess. Nine chipmakers have surged between 19% and 61% since the fighting began on February 27. That's right — a war that rattled oil markets and put the Federal Reserve on hold has somehow turned into a chip boom.
The iShares PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index Fund (SOXX) is the poster child for this unexpected rally. As of Tuesday, it's on track for its tenth consecutive daily gain. That's the ETF's longest winning streak since 2017. More impressively, it's up 28% over those ten sessions, which is its biggest ten-day run since 2002. The fund is now pressing against all-time highs around $395-396.
Moves like this in the semiconductor index are extraordinarily rare. In the entire history of the SOXX, you can only find three comparable episodes — and they're all clustered in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust: a 32.4% surge in October 2001, a 35% rally in October 2002, and a 29.45% gain in November 2002.
Each of those was a violent snapback from panic-driven lows. And that's exactly what the market seems to be betting on now with the Hormuz closure: that the disruption is temporary, that the ceasefire holds, and that the structural, AI-driven demand cycle for chips simply resumes where it left off.
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