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The man who predicted the 2008 financial crisis is betting that the biggest stock market rally of 2026 is about to collapse. Michael Boor is shorting Nvidia shares . He sells short shares of applied materials. He is shorting semiconductor ETF shares. And he says it's similar to the final months of the dot-com bubble.
Semiconductor stocks have risen more than 80% this year. AMD has more than doubled. Micron just crossed the trillion dollar market cap. And a man who made his career managing the peaks says that's it . So is he right, or is this one of those cases where the skeptic is wrong? The data suggests that both sides have their arguments, and the answer may depend on what happens in the next three weeks.
Before we delve into answering these questions, a quick disclaimer: this is not financial advice, it is for education and entertainment purposes only. All information mentioned in this video was accurate at the time of recording. Let's start with the numbers, because they are impressive. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has risen more than 80% since the beginning of the year.
AMD shares have risen more than 150% this year and last week hit an all-time high of $580. Micron shares have risen about 700% over the past 12 months, pushing the company's market capitalization above $1 trillion for the first time. TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, has grown 46% this year, thanks to 30% annual revenue growth.
And industry indicators are in line with stock dynamics. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global chip sales in the first quarter of 2026 alone reached $298.5 billion , up 25% from the previous quarter. In April, monthly sales reached $110.5 billion , and sales in the Americas increased by 115% compared to the same period last year.
The full-year forecast is now $1.5 trillion. For comparison, the entire semiconductor industry earned $791 billion in 2025. The market should almost double in one year. These are not small profits in a niche sector. Semiconductors are now the foundation of every major technology trend, from artificial intelligence training to autonomous vehicles and satellite internet.
The question is whether these stocks take into account the growth that has already occurred or the growth that is still to come. It all starts with one simple fact. The companies that buy these chips are the most profitable businesses on Earth. And they spend more, not less. Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Apple are collectively investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI-powered data center infrastructure.
These costs go directly to orders for Nvidia GPUs, AM accelerators, Micron high-speed memory, and TSMC manufacturing capacity. This is not speculative demand. These are purchase orders from the Fortune 500, backed by real capital expenditure budgets. Micron's latest earnings tell the story. The company reported third- quarter results that exceeded expectations, with revenue quadrupling year- over- year.
More importantly, Micron has signed 16 long-term agreements with customers such as data center operators and automakers that lock in sales for 3-5 years. Approximately half of Micron's revenue is now expected to come from these strategic deals. This is reduced demand, not hope. TSMC reported 2025 revenue of $122.9 billion, up 31.6% from the previous year.
And the consensus forecast for 2026 points to another year of growth of about 30%. When your revenue base is over $120 billion and still growing at 30%, it's hard to argue with a fundamental position . Now here's the other side. Michael Boor, an investor known for shorting the housing market before the 2008 crash , is actively betting that this rally will end badly.
According to recent SEC filings, Bohr took short positions in Nvidia at $198, Applied Materials at $729, and a semiconductor ETF at $642. He also has put options on QQQ, Palunteer, and Oracle expiring in January 2027, with strike prices well below current market levels. He doesn't hedge risks. He is making a directional bet that these stocks will fall significantly over the next 6 months.
His reasoning boils down to pattern recognition. Burr noted that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is trading with a historically extreme extension above its 200-day moving average, a level not reached since 2000. He also noted that 87% of venture funding is now directed at AI-related companies, and that AI-related borrowers now account for nearly half of all investment-grade bond issuances and approximately 38% of high-yield debt issuances.
These are the levels of capital concentration that preceded the dot-com crash. And there's one detail that even the bulls should take into account for a moment. Nvidia, the world's most important AI chipmaker, has only risen about 5% this year, while the broader semiconductor sector has risen more than 80%.
The king of AI commerce barely moves while everything else around him works. This discrepancy between the sector leader and the sector itself is worth paying attention to. The obvious counterargument against the bare position is that 2026 is not 1999. In the late 90s, internet companies were trading at hundreds of times their revenue, with no path to profitability.
Today, the semiconductor companies driving this growth have real profits, real margins, and real contracts. Micron just reported record earnings, with revenue quadrupling from last year to $41.5 billion . This is not a forecast. This is cash on the income statement . TSMC's advanced data processing technology provides most of its revenue, and only TSMC can produce it on a large scale.
AMD's data center revenue reached $5.8 billion last quarter, up 57% year-over- year. The difference between a bubble and a boom is whether profits eventually catch up with the stock price. In 2000, this never happened. In 2026, the profits are already here . The question is whether stock prices have already factored in the next 2-3 years of growth, or whether there is still room for growth.
This question will be answered in approximately 2 weeks. The second- quarter reporting season will begin the week of July 14 with the big banks, but the real test for semiconductors will come later this month. Alphabet reports from July 22, Microsoft and Meta from July 29, Apple and Amazon from July 30.
These five companies together are the largest buyers of artificial intelligence chips on the planet. Their earnings will show two critically important things. How much they actually spent on AI infrastructure in the second quarter and, more importantly, what their Ford forecast says about AI spending in the second half of 2026 and into 2027.
If the forecast for AI capex increases, the bullish scenario will strengthen and semiconductor growth will have fundamental support to continue. If the forecast flattens out or companies start signaling that AI spending is peaking, the bears, led by Bur, will look predictable, and the stocks of companies with the highest ticks in chips may be the most prone to a pullback.
So, names to watch before earnings reports are released. Nvidia won't report until August, but its stock moves after each of these earnings reports because hyperscalers are its biggest customers. AMD, which is trading at $552 near its all-time high, is banking on continued growth in data centers. Micron, which has a market cap of more than $1 trillion , needs to prove that its long-term contracts lead to sustainable profitability and watch TSMC's monthly earnings reports, which come ahead of the U.S.
earnings season and could get ahead of the AI spending narrative. So, let 's zoom out for a second . The semiconductor market is currently trying to assess the biggest infrastructure development since the Internet itself. Every major tech company is racing to build AI computing power, and the chip companies that supply that power are seeing demand like never before in the history of the industry.
But the markets were already like that. In the late 1990s, infrastructure development was also real. Fiber optic cables were laid across the oceans . Data centers were being built . And the companies supplying this capacity were showing incredible numbers until they did it . Infrastructure was needed.
The shares were simply priced as if demand would increase forever. Whether 2026 will be 1999 or the beginning of something much bigger is perhaps the most important question in the markets right now. And these next three weeks of reporting will go a long way toward answering it. So what do you guys think?
Are semiconductor stocks in a bubble, or is this a real situation? Share your thoughts in the comments. And if you haven't already gotten exclusive access to these alerts and stock analysis before everyone else, head over to our YouTube channel page, click " Join," and then click " Zingern Nation Premium Subscription" to get access before everyone else. See you next time.
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