Chip stocks have been facing a rough run of things lately. It’s a field that went from basically printing gold to running rapidly out of steam. And now, new word out of Barclays suggests that things will likely get worse for the chip sector before it gets better. The biggest reason? New chip restrictions from the Chinese market.
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Losing access to the Chinese market is a potential disaster, but based on chip stock performance today, investors aren’t especially worried. The only one who lost any ground out of a cross-section of five chip sector stocks was Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), who slipped fractionally in Friday morning’s trading. Meanwhile, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) were up fractionally, while Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL) added nearly 2%. The winner for Friday morning in the chip sector, meanwhile, was AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), which added nearly 3%.
The big problem all of these chipmakers faced was a growing likelihood of new restrictions from the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. Said bureau already put out some restrictions roughly this time last year, but now, there’s a likelihood that more restrictions will follow and put chip stocks on the firing line in the process. However, some analysts look for the growth of the artificial intelligence market to make up for at least some of that loss and give a “silver lining” to the dark clouds of government interference.
Which Chip Sector Stocks are Good Buys Right Now?
Intel was the big loser in this morning’s trading, as it lost ground and is the lowest consensus-rated stock—a Hold by analyst consensus—with the lowest upside potential of 1.91% thanks to its average price target of $36.53. Meanwhile, Nvidia may not have gained the most, but this Strong Buy offers 43.32% upside potential on its average price target of $644.69.
