Chip Stocks Notch 4th-Most Violent Stretch Ever as Index Sinks 32% From June Peak

Semiconductor stocks just logged one of the wildest stretches in market history. According to data shared by @KobeissiLetter, the S&P 500 Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment Index has now posted 11 trading sessions in which at least half of its components dropped 5% or more. That's the fourth-highest count on record.

For scale: only the 2008 Financial Crisis (16 such sessions) and the Dot-Com Bubble aftermath in 2000 and 2002 produced more of these brutal broad selloffs. Chips are now moving like it's a crisis-era market.

The shakeouts aren't subtle. The same index has fallen more than 5% in a single day on 12 separate occasions over the past five months, the kind of daily carnage that normally shows up once every few years, not a dozen times in a season.

The damage shows in the chart too. The index is down 32% from its June peak and sits at its lowest level since April. Buy-the-dip traders are getting tested, hard.

The takeaway from the data: this is historic volatility, not a normal pullback. With the index trading at springtime levels, every session is now a coin flip for chip investors.