Chip Index Doubled in 2024 Even With Nvidia at the Bottom
A major semiconductor index has surged 100% this year, yet Nvidia sits dead last among its members in relative performance.
Here's the trade that nobody's talking about loudly enough: the semiconductor sector just doubled — and the stock everyone's obsessed with is actually dragging on the index. Nvidia, the most hyped name in tech, ranks dead last among components in a major chip index that has still managed to double this year. Let that sink in.
The story here isn't that Nvidia is failing. It's that the company has grown so enormous that clearing the bar keeps getting harder. As one analyst put it bluntly, Nvidia "has gotten so large that its ability to beat expectations has gotten much smaller." When you're the biggest game in town, the crowd expects miracles every quarter — and even strong results start looking like disappointments.
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What this really tells you is that the rest of the chip space has been quietly crushing it. While retail traders piled into Nvidia, other semiconductor names carried the index to a 100% gain. Diversification within chips wasn't a consolation prize — it was the actual winning trade in 2024.
For anyone still treating Nvidia as a one-stop bet on the AI boom, this is a wake-up call. The AI infrastructure buildout lifts more boats than just the most obvious one. Chipmakers supplying memory, networking, and power management have all had a massive year, and the index performance proves it.
Don't sleep on the broader chip sector just because Nvidia grabs all the headlines. The numbers say the real alpha was spread across the space — not concentrated in a single ticker. Continue reading at MarketWatch.com
