Memory-chip funds jump after SK hynix's record quarter as Israel funds fall
Korea funds rose less than their stocks as the won fell, and a partial count left neither Israeli bloc with a majority.
Key takeaways
Memory-chip funds led Wednesday's gains after SK hynix reported a record quarter. Among U.S.-listed funds that do not use leverage, the iShares MSCI Israel ETF EIS was the day's worst, after a partial election count left neither bloc with a majority in the votes tallied so far.
Israel funds fall on an unfinished count
EIS fell 4.9%. The VanEck Israel ETF ISRA fell 3.9%.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange was closed Tuesday, election day. On Wednesday, the first session since Monday, the Tel Aviv 125 index fell 2.5%. The two funds fell more than that index.
The dollar was up 2.1% against the shekel late in the New York day, which added to those losses for a dollar investor.
With more than 80% of votes counted, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc nor the bloc behind Gadi Eisenkot, the leading challenger, had the 61 seats needed to form a government, CNBC reported. Eisenkot is a former Israeli military chief.
Memory-chip funds rose far more than the broad chip fund
SK hynix said operating profit rose 632% from a year earlier, to 83.3 trillion won, and the operating margin was 80%. Sales were 104.6 trillion won, the first quarter above 100 trillion. Prices of its key products rose on demand for artificial-intelligence memory, the company said, and it expects demand to exceed supply through 2030.
SK hynix rose 10.9% in Seoul, and Samsung Electronics rose 9.0%. The Kospi, South Korea's stock index, rose 6.6%.
The Tema Memory ETF DISK rose 7.9%. Roundhill Investments' Roundhill Memory ETF DRAM rose 7.1%. Micron, the U.S. memory-chip maker, rose 5.9% in New York.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH rose 1.7%. Nvidia, 20% of that fund, fell 1.2%. What paid was memory, not chips as a group.
Memory stocks and funds outran the broad chip ETF
The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF EWY and Franklin Templeton's Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF FLKR each rose 5.3% in dollars. Samsung and SK hynix were 45% of EWY.
Taken together, the stocks in EWY rose about a percentage point more in won than the fund did in dollars. The difference is close to the won's 1.2% drop against the dollar.
A computing-power fund rose with its own stocks
Roundhill Investments' Roundhill Neocloud ETF NCLD, a fund of companies that supply computing power, rose 6.6%. Nebius, one of its largest holdings, rose 7.0%, and CoreWeave rose 7.3%.
Company reports moved the other big stocks
Vertiv, which makes power and cooling equipment for data centers, rose 16.5%. Organic orders more than doubled from a year earlier, and the company raised full-year net-sales guidance by $650 million, to a midpoint of $14.65 billion.
Oracle, the database and cloud-software company, rose 10.6% after it set a fiscal 2030 revenue target of at least $225 billion and limited additional capital raises through that year to $20 billion, excluding refinancing. It also said free cash flow would turn positive in the second half of fiscal 2028.
F5, which sells software that delivers and secures applications, fell 20.4%. On Tuesday it guided to revenue growth of 8% to 9% in fiscal 2027, after growth of 11% in fiscal 2026.
Enphase Energy, which makes residential solar equipment, fell 16.0%. On Tuesday it forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $225 million to $255 million, against third-quarter revenue of $293.3 million, and said U.S. residential solar demand is soft. Enphase was 6.7% of the Invesco Solar ETF TAN, which fell 2.5%.
Brazil funds fall two days after the crash
On Wednesday the iShares MSCI Brazil Small-Cap ETF EWZS fell 4.2%, Franklin Templeton's Franklin FTSE Brazil ETF FLBR fell 2.3%, and the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF EWZ fell 2.0%. On Monday Brazil's Ibovespa index fell 13.9%, its steepest one-day decline since the COVID-19 market turmoil of 2020, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's re-election, Valor International reported.
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