---
title: "Cybersecurity's week was Monday. Chip funds needed four more days"
url: "https://etf.net/news/cybersecurity-s-week-was-monday-chip-funds-needed-four-more-days-2026-09-18"
published_at: "2026-09-18T22:15:33.263Z"
updated_at: "2026-09-18T22:15:33.263Z"
byline: "ETF.net Research"
---

# Cybersecurity's week was Monday. Chip funds needed four more days

All nine U.S. cybersecurity ETFs finished higher for the week ended Friday, September 18, a median 7.8%, after an AI safety warning; VanEck's SMH recovered to +0.8%.

By ETF.net Research. Published Sep 18, 2026.

First Trust's Nasdaq cybersecurity fund CIBR, a $16.6 billion book, jumped **6.0%** on Monday, September 14, and finished Friday **5.8%** above the prior week's close. Monday was the week. VanEck's semiconductor fund SMH fell **4.8%** that same Monday and spent the next four sessions getting back to a 0.8% weekly gain.

Chart: **Monday** made CIBR's week; SMH spent four days climbing back

[Cybersecurity ETFs rise 10.7% as chip funds fall 5.6% on AI slowdown call](https://etf.net/news/cybersecurity-etfs-rise-10-7-as-chip-funds-fall-5-6-on-ai-slowdown-call-2026-09-14) was the split inside technology on Monday. It started with a Saturday essay. Anthropic's Dario Amodei asked frontier labs to slow the rate at which they improve model capabilities so safety work can catch up, and he named misuse of AI for cyberattacks among the risks. Leaders at OpenAI and xAI backed a slower pace. Reuters reported that those calls for an AI slowdown pummeled chipmakers. Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi described cybersecurity stocks as getting a jolt from the same warnings. CrowdStrike's chief executive, George Kurtz, told CNBC the genie is already out of the bottle: slowing what comes next will not eliminate risks from models already widely available. CrowdStrike rose **13.9%** and Palo Alto Networks **13.1%** in the same session Nvidia fell 3.4%.

All nine funds in the cybersecurity group finished higher, a median **7.8%**. That ran against a market in which 3,629 of 5,526 U.S.-listed ETFs closed the week lower. State Street's S&P 500 fund SPY lost 0.4%. The Dow industrials fund DIA lost 1.9%. Wednesday's quarter-point rate increase, a 12-0 vote that took the Federal Open Market Committee's target range to 3.75% to 4.00%, moved CIBR 0.7% lower and SMH 0.6% higher.

## The funds people hold

CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Zscaler contributed **3.9 percentage points** of CIBR's **5.8%** week, covering about 31% of the fund. Zscaler alone gained **19.9%**. Broadcom is a 5.5% holding and Cisco 6.4%, and both finished the week lower. They were small weights on a large gain. The fund most holders own is a cybersecurity index that still carries chip and networking names.

Monday versus the full week, for the funds people actually hold:

Table: Fund, Monday, Week

Nvidia is 22.6% of SMH. It fell 3.4% Monday and finished the week 1.8% higher. Advanced Micro Devices, a much smaller weight, contributed more to the fund's weekly gain than Nvidia did, because it rose 8.5%.

## GraniteShares' 2x CrowdStrike fund turned over $198 million

GraniteShares' 2x long CrowdStrike fund CRWL gained **27.7%** Monday and **29.3%** for the week. The fund holds about $80 million. It turned over $198 million in five sessions, **10.5 times** the prior week's dollar volume, the largest such jump among the week's top gainers.

Chart: **CRWL** turned over 10.5× its prior-week volume

That figure records shares changing hands. It does not say who traded, in which direction, or why.

CrowdStrike fell 0.5% Wednesday and 3.3% Friday; CRWL fell **6.9%** on Friday. The daily reset still produced roughly double the stock's 15.0% week.

A cybersecurity holder and a semiconductor holder can both file the position under "tech." This week they owned different businesses. One fund is built around security software, with some chip and networking names still inside. The other is built around the chips. A single AI headline does not make them the same holding.

Source: etf.net, https://etf.net/news/cybersecurity-s-week-was-monday-chip-funds-needed-four-more-days-2026-09-18. Please cite the page URL.