Quick Read
Invesco Semiconductors ETF (PSI) gained 104.96% from Dec 31, 2025 to May 26, 2026, dramatically outperforming the S&P 500’s 10.07% and iShares Semiconductor ETF’s 89.42% due to its equal-weight structure holding 3.86% in Nvidia instead of the typical megacap concentration, with top holdings in Micron Technology (MU), Lam Research (LRCX), and Intel (INTC) that benefited from surging memory chip pricing and semiconductor capital equipment spending.
PSI’s exceptional 2026 performance reflected the broadening of AI capital spending beyond megacap GPU designers to memory makers and equipment suppliers, a structural tailwind that is already largely priced in at current valuations, making future gains dependent on sustained memory pricing strength and hyperscaler capex momentum.
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A $10,000 position in Invesco Semiconductors ETF (NASDAQ:PSI) on the last trading day of 2025 was worth ~$20,496 by the close on May 26, 2026, and that is the kind of arithmetic that ruins dinner parties. Your brother-in-law at Goldman is up 10.07% in the S&P 500. Your friend who only buys the Nasdaq 100 through Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) is up 18.88%. The hedge fund manager at the end of the table, the one who keeps mentioning his Sharpe ratio, is somewhere in between. And the cheapest, most boring sleeve of a semiconductor ETF that almost nobody at those tables holds is up 104.96% in not quite five months.
That is the headline. The mechanism is the more interesting part, and so is the question of whether a reader who shows up to the chart in late May 2026 is buying the same setup or a much more expensive version of it.
The Arithmetic, On A Specific Day, In Plain Dollars
PSI opened 2026 at an adjusted price of $78.86 on the December 31, 2025 close. It traded at $161.63 on the May 26, 2026 close, including a 5.13% single-session move on the way there. So $10,000 became ~$20,496, or roughly a double in ~100 trading days. That is total return on an adjusted basis. The figure does not require a cherry-picked entry inside the window, because the window starts on the calendar year boundary. It is the boring, defensible version of the headline.
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Stretch the lens out and the picture is louder. PSI is up 217.23% over the trailing year, 298.59% over five years, and 1,793.3% over ten. The Motley Fool ran the numbers in late 2025 and noted that $100 invested ten years ago was worth ~$920 today, an 820% total return versus the S&P 500’s 233%. None of this is leverage. PSI is a plain, unlevered, fully invested basket.
The benchmark comparison is what gives the 2026 number its edge. iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX), the cap-weighted competitor most institutions actually own, is up 89.42% year to date. That is an enormous number on its own. PSI still has ~15 percentage points on it. Against the S&P 500 the gap is closer to 95 percentage points. There are not many active equity funds in the world that are going to print that kind of relative number in 2026, which is the reason the title of the article uses the phrase it uses.
Why PSI And Not One Of The Famous Semi ETFs
The mechanism here is mostly one structural choice. PSI equal-weights ~30 semiconductor companies tracked through the Dynamic Semiconductor Intellidex Index. Cap-weighted funds like SOXX and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF lean hard on the largest two or three names, which in practice means a very large slug of the two biggest megacap chip designers does most of the work. PSI carries only 3.86% in NVIDIA, which sounds like a handicap until you notice what 2026 has actually rewarded.
Memory chips and semiconductor capital equipment. Those are the two pockets the equal weight forces you into, and they are the two pockets that PineBridge and others spent the late-2025 outlook season flagging. PineBridge’s 2026 equity piece called out a rebound in memory and continued investments in advanced logic, with wafer fabrication equipment spending expected to rise on the back of those two threads. PSI’s top weights have sat on Micron Technology, Lam Research, and Intel, which is to say, the memory cycle and the “pick and shovel” toolmakers. When those two pockets run, an equal-weight semis ETF outruns a cap-weighted one because the cap-weighted one is mostly concentrated in the single largest GPU designer.
The second piece of the mechanism is the AI capex story finally broadening out from the obvious winners. JPMorgan’s 2026 outlook framed it directly, with tech sectors accounting for 36% of S&P 500 earnings and 56% of the index’s capital spending growth over the last 12 months. That spending is not staying inside the megacap GPU designer. It is flowing to the people who build the memory, the etch tools, the deposition tools, the test equipment, and the specialty foundries. PSI’s TradingView writeup in late April flagged a 182.6% surge from its 52-week low, attributing the run to the AI boom and the domestic chip production push. A Tower Semiconductor holding inside the basket was up 444% on a 12-month basis on the strength of defense radar and supply-chain reshoring work.
So the engine is identifiable. Equal weight plus a sector tailwind that rewards the second and third tier of names more than the megacap. The expense ratio is 0.56%, AUM is ~$1.29 billion, and the beta is 1.58. None of those numbers are unusual for the category. The performance came from holdings.
What A Reader Buying In Late May 2026 Is Actually Buying
This is the part the dinner-party victory lap leaves out. PSI rose 13% in the past week and 19.85% in the past month. SOXX rose 14.77% in the past week. Anything moving that fast is pricing in a lot of forward good news before the news lands. Morningstar’s 2026 outlook tracks its Global Next Generation AI Index against fair value and notes the index sits above fair value, having ranged from 74% to 114% of fair value since 2023. An Intellectia AI valuation note from early April put PSI itself in the “fair” zone based on forward P/S ratio versus its 5-year average, with the caveat that the level “seems unsustainable despite strong revenue growth.” That was 47 dollars ago on the chart.
The conditions that produced the run are mostly still in place. Wafer fab equipment spending is still expected to grow. Memory pricing has not rolled. The reshoring story still has years of capex behind it. PineBridge’s view of ~25% annual growth in datacenter equipment for the next four to five years, anchored to electrical infrastructure constraints, is the kind of structural call that has held up across multiple outlook cycles. The setup is intact. It is also a lot more expensive than it was on January 2.
Three indicators are worth watching from here, all of them observable without a Bloomberg terminal. First, the memory pricing tape, because contract DRAM and NAND pricing from the largest US memory maker is what makes the largest single weight in PSI move. Second, the quarterly capex guidance from the hyperscalers and from TSMC, because that capex is the order book for the major wafer fab equipment toolmakers. Third, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which is what SOXX is built around, because if SOXX rolls, PSI is going to roll harder given its higher beta. Vanguard’s 2026 piece flagged that AI investment’s outsized contribution to economic growth represents the key risk factor in 2026, which is a polite way of saying that if AI capex blinks, semis blink first.
The honest read is that PSI’s 2026 was earned, and that the mechanism is identifiable and largely structural. The fund did exactly what it was built to do during a regime that happened to suit it. That is the durable part. The part that will not repeat on the same scale is the starting price. You can still own the mechanism. You cannot still own the entry. Watch memory pricing and watch hyperscaler capex, because that is where the next leg, up or down, is going to show up first.
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