What Happened?
A number of stocks fell in the morning session after Samsung Electronics' record quarterly profit triggered a textbook "sell-the-news" reaction, compounded by a Reuters report that China's DeepSeek is developing its own AI inference chip.
Samsung's preliminary Q2 operating profit of 89.4tr won ($58.4B) surged 1,810% year-over-year, with revenue up 129% to 171tr won, beating consensus. Memory names had run enormously into the report so a blowout that merely confirmed the AI memory supercycle gave holders every reason to lock in gains suggesting the good news was already in the price.
Second, DeepSeek's chip revived the structural fear that custom silicon erodes Nvidia's moat. The project is early-stage and constrained by US export controls on advanced foundries and high-bandwidth memory, but it stacks onto OpenAI's Broadcom-built "Jalapeño" inference chip and Anthropic's early talks with Samsung on a 2nm accelerator, a pattern of AI labs designing around Nvidia over time.
Lastly, there is the AI-bubble question: Morgan Stanley told clients earlier in the week the rally was "nearing its end," expecting "more capex discipline." Risks ahead include SK Hynix's ~$28bn Nasdaq debut which could pull institutional capital from Micron and related peers, while heavy insider selling and Michael Burry's disclosed MU short added overhangs.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Semtech (NASDAQ: SMTC) fell 9.1%. Is now the time to buy Semtech? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Analog Semiconductors company Power Integrations (NASDAQ: POWI) fell 9.2%. Is now the time to buy Power Integrations? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Amkor (NASDAQ: AMKR) fell 9%. Is now the time to buy Amkor? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Entegris (NASDAQ: ENTG) fell 9.9%. Is now the time to buy Entegris? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Kulicke and Soffa (NASDAQ: KLIC) fell 9.7%. Is now the time to buy Kulicke and Soffa? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
Zooming In On Entegris (ENTG)
Entegris’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 36 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 1 day ago when the stock gained 4.5% on the news that the semiconductor sector continued to rebound from the previous week's sharp selloff amid bullish Wall Street updates.
Broadcom (AVGO) gained about 4.2% after it disclosed in an 8-K that it signed multi-year agreements with Apple through 2031 to supply custom ASIC silicon. Separately, bullish memory notes landed: UBS raised its Q3 DDR contract-pricing forecast to +32% quarter-on-quarter (from +17%) and reiterated DRAM undersupply "until at least 2Q28"; Citi added an upside catalyst watch on Micron; and BofA reiterated Buy ($1,550), arguing memory is "roughly 35-40% of cloud AI capex… yet memory stocks trade at sub-par 10x forward PE." Goldman's trading desk flagged an oversold buy-the-dip setup after momentum factors fell 24% from their peak, the largest drawdown since Q1 2023.
This was a sector recovery on top of a technical bounce and cheaper oil after OPEC+ lifted output. Two events reinforced it as SK Hynix's ~$28bn Nasdaq listing the previous week and Samsung's earnings later in the week kept the "memory super-cycle" story in the headlines.
Entegris is up 48.4% since the beginning of the year, but at $132.95 per share, it is still trading 15% below its 52-week high of $156.44 from April 2026. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Entegris’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,137.
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