While chip stocks were getting crushed, the biggest leveraged semiconductor ETF just sucked in record money.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) finally snapped its eight-day losing streak Monday — its longest since 2008 after a roughly 15.7% slide. Nasdaq jumped 1.11% as Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Micron, and memory names bounced. But the more interesting story is who was buying the dip and who is still betting against the group.
Biggest Inflows: SOXL Dominated
The Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (SOXL) became the clear magnet for aggressive dip-buying:
- Roughly $3.8 billion in inflows in the week ending around Oct 16 — on pace for its largest weekly intake on record.
- Single-day hauls hit $1.7B+ on multiple sessions.
- Over a short stretch it took in about $6.4–6.8 billion net while the ETF itself was still falling hard (down 25–35% over the prior week).
- Korean retail investors alone poured in about $1.73 billion into SOXL in the first half of October — more than half of all their U.S. stock net buying in that period.
The plain-vanilla SOXX (iShares Semiconductor ETF) also saw hundreds of millions in inflows the same week, though flows were more mixed day-to-day. The message was clear: leveraged traders and retail (especially overseas) were loading up on 3x exposure even as prices kept dropping. Classic buy-the-blood behavior in the AI trade.
Who’s Upgrading and Betting Semis Higher
Two high-profile upgrades landed right as the rebound started:
- Goldman Sachs upgraded CoreWeave (CRWV) from Neutral to Buy. Analyst Gabriela Borges still sees about 73% upside to her (lowered) $106 price target. Her core argument: investors are overestimating future borrowing costs and underestimating the potential upward revisions to unlevered IRR. Goldman points to tight GPU supply, CoreWeave’s ability to deploy capacity fast, and asset-backed financing that should keep costs more manageable than the market fears.
- JPMorgan upgraded Intel (INTC) from Underweight to Neutral. After nearly four years of being bearish, they cited improved execution under the new CEO, rising demand for CPUs in agentic AI workloads, and tight leading-edge supply that should support earnings revisions.
Broader context: KeyBanc has been positive on Nvidia, Intel, Micron, and Monolithic Power. Consensus on the big AI chip names (NVDA, AMD, AVGO, MU) remains Strong Buy / Buy-heavy. Retail and leveraged ETF flows show the speculative side is still very much long the AI story.
Who Wants Semis / CoreWeave to Go Down
The other side of the trade is focused heavily on CoreWeave and the broader AI-infrastructure financing risk:
- CoreWeave short interest stood around 60 million shares (about 17–19% of float) as of the latest official data. Days-to-cover is low (around 1.75), so it’s not a classic squeeze setup, but short volume has frequently run 45–60% of daily trading.
- The bond market was screaming concern: some CoreWeave debt yields spiked toward 15% last week, highlighting credit-market stress around its large debt load.
- Related AI data-center landlords that host CoreWeave capacity have also seen rising short interest.
- Bear thesis: the company needs massive ongoing borrowing to fulfill its huge backlog, high interest costs could crush returns, and questions remain about how durable frontier AI demand will be versus cheaper off-frontier compute.
In short: the bulls (Goldman, JPMorgan, leveraged retail, Korean buyers) are treating the recent rout as an overdone reaction to financing fears. The bears are still focused on CoreWeave’s balance sheet and the risk that AI infrastructure spending becomes a classic overbuild story.
The next real test is the coming wave of earnings (Meta, Tesla, SpaceX, then the big chip names). Until then, SOXL flows and the CoreWeave short interest remain the cleanest real-time scoreboard of who is still long versus who is still short the AI hardware trade.
Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.
