Semis: Top crowded longs and shorts as overweight positioning declines – Jefferies

Broadcom (AVGO) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) remain the most-crowded long stocks among institutional investors in a Jefferies’ survey, which also found the quarterly percentage of investors overweight semis has declined.

Jefferies found 42% of institutional investors were overweight the semiconductor industry ahead of the October period of corporate earnings, dropping from 60% in its July TMT Trading Positioning Survey.

It also found investors underweighting semis increased to 16%, from 11% in July.

In gauging buyside positioning and sentiment, Jefferies’ survey for October saw Intel (INTC) remain as the most-crowded short for the third consecutive quarter. Micron (MU), meanwhile, landed on its Top 10 short list for the first time since the July 2023 survey.

Also, most long-only and hedge fund investors remain underweight Analog semi companies outside of Texas Instruments (TXN). The survey was conducted between September 30 and October 11.

Crowded Longs – excluding Nvidia (NVDA)

• Broadcom (AVGO) –
• Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM)
• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
• ASML (ASML)
• Marvell (MRVL)
• Arm Holdings (ARM)
• Qualcomm (QCOM)
• Texas Instruments (TXN)
• KLA Corp. (KLAC)
• Applied Materials (AMAT)

Crowded Shorts – excluding Nvidia

• Intel (INTC)
• Micron (MU)
• ON (ON)
• ASML (ASML)
• AMD (AMD)
• Wolfspeed (WOLF)
• Lam Research (LRCX)
• Texas Instruments (TXN)
• Applied Materials (AMAT)
• Microchip Technology (MCHP)

Investors who want to track semiconductor stocks through ETFs can monitor funds including (SOXX), (XSD), (SMH) and (PSI).