저자: CoreyJohnson · 외국인
요약 보기
TSMC 실적이 AI 칩 수요(HPC 28% 분기 성장)로 강세, 미국 애리조나 투자 확대 긍정 평가. 엔비디아 H20 중국 수출 재개 논쟁은 언급하되 구체적 투자 방향은 제시 안 함. 공급망(ASML→TSMC→엔비디아) 관점에서 기술주가 시장을 지지한다는 견해, 본인 보유 종목 Coherent(76% 상승) 언급. 후반 Tom White는 TSMC·엔비디아 옵션 전략(강세 수직 스프레드)을 소개하며 단기 상승 기대와 연준 금리인하 불필요 시각을 제시.
다듬은 글
Good morning and welcome back to Morning Trade Live. I'm Nicole Pedalites and it's time to go inside out on Taiwan semi and the semiconductor sector overall. Joining me right now, Corey Johnson, chief market strategy at Apistrophe Capital Research. Love when you're here. This is uh you eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff.
We saw some good numbers from Taiwan sent me some nice sales numbers. What did you think? What were the takeaways? Uh there were many. I I was one of those companies I just eat up all the data. They give a ton of data in their their corporate presentation about the way they're making semiconductors which is in terms of how uh what size the the the wafers are using but also the end markets and the end markets show you know maybe not a big shocker but the AI trade is hot and they are selling lots and lots of of AI chips.
I'm looking at the or they I'm looking at the presentation right now 28% quarter quarter growth in their high performance computing sector. So the the chips they make chips for iPhones and they make chips for kind of every great thing that uh is using semiconductors and every lousy thing that's using semiconductors but they've shown the greatest growth in the most amazing stuff which is AI chips.
Right. So that's good news. I mean just to show whether or not we're still in the AI revolution. And it certainly seems that way, right? It doesn't appear to be slowing. What do you think? Right. And of course, they are um working so closely with Nvidia and I just saw all good news. Um because Nvidia has been an incredible story as well.
Well, I mean, these are the guys that make the Nvidia chips. So, uh it's it's handinand glove with Nvidia, but you know, it's also an important supplier like I said to a lot of other companies and Apple as well. And the smartphone business was actually kind of weak in this quarter, but the guidance suggested it would be stronger next quarter, which is interesting.
We'll keep an eye out on that, what that means in terms of um uh the development of of a better smartphone industry, which has been kind of suffering for the last few years here. There was interest there because the the wonder is, you know, is if you're if the new smartphones can do things with AI that the old smartphones can't do, consumers might rush to those phones.
Uh there also of course was a big move uh in the last quarter to try to get a ahead of tariffs for uh consumers in the US to buy a lot of iPhones. We wonder what that's going to mean for the end of the year if that pulled demand forward. But again high performance computing is is a story. The other story here that's really interesting is another uh domestic and politics story which is they are moving production you know beyond Taiwan to look at Japan to look at uh Germany and to look at the US and specifically they talked about raising their production in the US and spending over hundred billion dollars to build up semiconductor plants in Arizona which is really positive.
Yeah, I saw that you had that. I thought that was really interesting. I was going to ask you about that. I'm glad you touched on that. when when we think about the big picture here, um are there headwinds for a chip stock like this one? So, and you're right. I wrote a research note about this this weekend.
Fingers were crossed that this would be the story, but indeed it turns out to be the story that um the the growth in this company is is fantastic, right? So, you've got a company that's doing over $20 billion in quarterly revenues. Those numbers are hard to even imagine. But this is, you know, with all the excitement about, oh, Goldman Sachs is reporting earnings and JP Morgan, the earnings season has begun.
Look, this company, Taiwan Semiconductor, ASML, those are the most important companies in the world. I don't want to hear about it about New York banks because if a New York bank doesn't have business, another New York another New York bank will have business. But what's happening in Taiwan Semiconductor, the way they make chips using the machines from ASML, those are the most important businesses in the world.
And we can see in a quarter when you have a b a business that was doing, you know, $18 billion last year in this in the in the second quarter, now doing over $20 billion, 30% growth on an annual basis for one of the biggest and most important companies in the world is impressive. Yeah, I like that you're talking about some of the others and some of the demand that has to happen.
Um, a big sense of relief when we had the H20 trips. Now, the ban was lifted about sending those chips to China. Um, what how did you interpret that story? Because I was under the impression how Nvidia was working on new chips that would meet the new regulations. Uh, but then it appeared that they went back to the original H20 chip.
Um, and that Huawei was trying to steal away a lot of business, which it did, but it doesn't have an H20 chip like Nvidia. Yeah. I I I honestly, Nicole, I'm kind of torn about this. I really don't know what the answer is. Is it better for us to engage with um uh countries that are opposed to what the United States wants and what's what world democracies want like Iran, like China?
Is it better to have a relationship with them and try to have our products go in there and change the world or is it better to set up barriers and have big tariffs and have big rules against shipping things there against negotiations there? I really don't know the answer. And but but it is an interesting dynamic here where do we want to have US designed ships sold into China so we have some influence there but China gets to have great AI like the rest of us or do we want to slow down their development certainly China's developing AI with or without us and Jensen Wong has made a a very convincing argument literally convincing because he convinced the president to completely change his mind and allow the greatest and most powerful uh chips to be sold hold into China, those H20s and beyond.
But I think that's the question, you know, are in the future wars won't be fought with tanks, will be fought with semiconductors. So if we're willing to sell our best semiconductors, we America, I don't know, the the the Western world into into China, it it raises some interesting questions about what that's going to look like going forward, how those uh technologies will be used, and is it better for us to have influence there than not have influence there?
Those are the issues being weighed. And just in a big picture, people always love to invest in tech. Which names do you think will certainly be winners uh going forward for the longer term? I mean, which ones would you say investors should be buying now? Well, without giving specific stock advice, I think it's really interesting to watch the supply chain uh play out through the through the financial markets, right?
So, you've got ASML, which makes the machines, which lets uh Taiwan Semiconductor make the chips, which lets uh Nvidia have those chips and sell those chips and put them into systems. And then you look further down the line at companies I pay attention to like Coherent and Fabernet and companies that wire those systems together.
U it's it's really interesting to watch the tech play, if you will, really kind of support the markets when we've got a lot of concerns about what's being sold. Remember just 24 hours ago we were talking about ASML saying because tariffs are so punishing and just weird and we don't know what's going to happen.
We won't give any guidance and yet we see them put up pretty good numbers. We watch Taiwan semiconductor put up pretty good numbers but in the face of real concerns about what's going to happen in the future. It's interesting interesting to watch technology kind of support the markets right here right now.
Yeah, I just plugged in coherent co that's up 76% in three months and probably more from the April uh I'm not bragging. I'm disclosing I own the stock so you know. Okay, that's a thing. No, I know you never brag. You're a good man, Corey Johnson. I know that. Uh we've known you for many years. Um straight up.
Thank you so much. It's always great to see you and nice conversation here pertaining to tech. Thank you. Now it's time to do some trades. So we bring in Tom White, host of Fast Market, who's taking a look at a few example trades for us. First up, Taiwan Semi. Good morning to you, Tom. Yeah, good morning, Nicole.
Yeah, stocks popping here at all-time highs. Not surprising. Uh, you know, beating on EPS revenue raising guidance moving forward, especially for next quarter. So, the AI trade in full force here. So, I looked at a strategy using the option market because uh maybe it's getting a little bit frothy here on a technical basis and maybe a valuation basis, but you can still take a bullish view uh with this type of strategy.
I went up to the August 1 weekly options. So, just two weeks till expiration on this one. And this is one of those strategies you can do over and over again if you think a stock's going to remain above a certain point. Uh, I looked at selling the 235 strike put and then against it because I want to stay risk defined.
Buying the 225 strike put. So, a short $10 wide neutral to bullish put vertical. You're going to collect roughly about a $2 credit on that. That's what you can make. 200 bucks per spread. You got 800 bucks in risk, but that's all the way below $225. Now, if you collect a $2 credit, takes your break even down to 233 over the next 15 days.
uh that's over 4% below the current share price. So, you're still giving yourself that cushion. The probability of that short 235 put finishing out of the money at expiration, which is what you want. Uh and just keep that $200 that you collect on this. Uh that's about 68% at this point. So, you've got a higher probability of success.
Uh the trade-off is you're risking 800 bucks to only make 200, but you've still got that cushion to the downside uh on this type of trade. Okay. And then can we take a look at Nvidia, which was pushing up against highs on my last check? Um you have an example trade for us. Yeah, they don't report earnings until the end of August.
So it gives you some duration here if you want to take a directional bias on it. If you look at implied volatility levels in Nvidia, they're at about uh 5% on the IV percentile rank. So what does that mean? Well, we're in the bottom 95% of implied volatility levels that we've seen over the last 52 weeks.
So really low option exttrinsic option premium at this point. So taking a directional bias using long verticals uh might be the way to play this if you have uh that uh directional uh bias here. So, I looked at a bullish trade here where I'm going to buy something slightly in the money, the 170 strike call.
And this is out in the August 15th monthly cycle. So, you got 29 days to expiration. Buy the 170 call and sell against it the 185 strike call to offset some of the costs on this bullish position. You're paying roughly about a $6 debit on it. That's your risk. 600 $600 per spread with the chance to make an additional 900 uh if the stock trades above 185 at new all-time highs.
Your break even on this one 176 to the upside. That's less than 3% above the current share price. So, you don't need a monster move to the upside to get above that break even. And by buying directionally biased trades like this one, this example is bullish, uh it gives you some flexibility as far as trade management goes, right?
So, you don't have to wait until expiration to close all or a portion of your position uh on this one. Uh it gives you that that flexibility. If you get that spike up to 180 and say this expands to $1011, uh it allows you to maybe close it early ahead of expiration. So, it gives you uh that flexibility that we always talk about in these trade managements.
And you know before I let you go Tom just a big picture thought here as we've got good news from Taiwan semi and that really shows a bright outlook. I saw one article that said the AI chip boom outweighs the tariff fears and Nvidia while you know we've been on this morning hit a new record high of 17364 I see here.
So good news there for the Nvidia folks. What's your big picture takeaway? We've had earnings season thus far and also just the tech trade is still on. Yeah, I think uh if you take a look at it, the optimism that the markets had uh since those April lows is coming to fruition at this point and earning season kicking off this week and it's been uh pretty robust so far and that's lending some support.
Retail sales better than expected. If you look at the year-over-year numbers, it's kind of reflective, Nicole, that, hey, we're not going to worry about the Fed and what they're going to do with rates and use that Fed rate cut as maybe a put behind the market. We're going to look more at uh accelerating growth in the latter half of this year.
I think that's what the market's focused on this at this point. we can be in this restrictive territory that the Fed's in right now without rate cuts because we're starting to see a reaceleration not only from the consumer uh but from the economy as a whole and then you still got a robust jobs market, right?
4.1% unemployment rate uh that's lending some uh support to the optimism here uh in this push to risk on assets. So keep that in mind if we continue to see growth kind of start to reacelerate and earnings are better than expected, not as bad as a lot of people had predicted that we were going to see a slowdown.
Uh that's going to be beneficial for the markets and then you can push aside maybe those expectations for a rate cut because right now we don't need them. All right, stocks are higher across the board folks. Thank you Tom White.
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