It’s time to buy the dip on chipmakers, according to Fundstrat head of research Tom Lee. U.S. tech stocks fell off a cliff on Tuesday following a rout in Asian markets that saw the South Korean KOSPI index fall nearly 10%. The iShares SOXX semiconductor ETF dropped about 8% on the day, and the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF — which tracks the Nasdaq 100 — lost around 3%. Lee called the moves in tech stocks “startlingly large” but said they are likely to rebound and present an opportunity for investors. “Semis [are] down -7%. This is the 18th time since 2011. 88% of the time, semis more than recover one month later. Buy that dip,” he wrote to clients. Since 2011, there have been 17 occasions when semiconductor stocks fell by 6% or more in a single day, and “this has proven to be a buyable pullback basically every time,” the famously bullish Lee said. Several big tech stocks were higher in early trading Wednesday, with semiconductor makers including Broadcom and Intel clocking modest gains. Makers of chips and memory components have seen parabolic upswings in their share values since the end of March, with the SOXX ETF soaring 84% over that period. The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) is up about 150% since its launch in early April. SOXX mountain 2026-04-01 SOXX since end of April Computer memory, as a basic component for many different industries, is a famously volatile sector. But as demand for computing power has increased as a result of advancements in algorithms for artificial intelligence, the memory sector has been ramping to boost supply. The shortfall relative to demand has given the sector atypically dependable pricing power that has boosted profit margin projections and undergirded equity performance as a result. The pricing advantage has also been a sore spot for tech companies that have to buy it as a component. “For the June quarter … we expect significantly higher memory costs,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on his company’s earnings call at the end of April. “Beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business and we’ll continue to evaluate this.”
