The semiconductor industry has received notable attention from investors, given how much of the artificial intelligence spending boom has benefited the industry. And Bank of America pointed to recent data from active fund managers making changes in their portfolios as worthy of attention.
According to the investment firm’s February Equity Strategy data, the relative weighting for the industry continued to decline among active managers, down to 0.84x, the lowest since June 2012, and down from 0.89x in January.
Despite the declines in relative weighting, the compute area of semiconductors has seen the greatest increase in ownership, led by AMD (AMD). Fund managers increased their position in AMD by 1,001 basis points on a quarter-over-quarter basis, Bank of America said.
Conversely, analog chip makers saw an average decline of 51 basis points quarter-over-quarter and 254 basis points year-over-year, with Onsemi (ON) and Microchip (MCHP) seeing 81 basis point declines. Analog Devices (ADI) was the only analog stock to see a sequential rise, up 6 basis points.
AMD’s rise, Synopsys’ fall
Delving deeper, Bank of America said that AMD is now owned by 35% of funds and is the third-most widely owned chip stock behind Nvidia (NVDA) (at 78%) and Broadcom (AVGO) (at 74%). However, it is still underweight compared to the S&P 500, at 15th among semiconductors.
On the flip side, Synopsys (SNPS) has seen the greatest decrease in ownership, down 406 basis points quarter-over-quarter, at 26% of fund managers. However, it is still the second most overweight semiconductor stock, at 1.71x relative weight, behind KLA Corp. (KLAC) at 1.79x. Lam Research (LRCX) has seen an increase in ownership, up 670 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 33% of fund managers, now the fourth highest in the group.
Other takes
Other notable takeaways from the survey include: Teradyne (TER) seeing a 28% decrease quarter-over-quarter in its relative weight, to 0.30x from 0.47x in January 2026; ownership in Micron (MU) increasing to 25% from 18%, amid the continued rise in memory prices. However, Micron’s relative weight was down 5% quarter-over-quarter to 1.24x, the lowest in over a year but still the fifth highest in semiconductors.
Other findings include Lumentum (LITE) and Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) having the most short interest (16% and 14% of the float), while Nvidia and Broadcom have the least, at roughly 1% apiece.
Long-only investors had higher net weighting in Skyworks, Qualcomm (QCOM), NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), Broadcom, and Texas Instruments (TXN), compared to hedge funds, which were more overweight in Teradyne, Lam Research, and Onsemi. Both long-only investors and hedge funds were overweight Applied Materials, Cadence Design Systems (CDNS), and Synopsys, the survey showed.