Semiconductor stocks are staging a “revenge” trade after last week’s sharp sell-off, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said on Monday. “What I think is really happening today is revenge,” Cramer said on CNBC. “We’re seeing a lot of people who are saying, ‘Look, it’s time to go back in the group. The group has been hit.'” The rebound follows a broad semiconductor sell-off late last week, as investors rotated away from the artificial intelligence winners that powered much of the market’s first-half gains. A basket of chip stocks, the iShares Semiconductor ETF, fell 6.4% on Wednesday and 5.6% on Thursday (the market was closed Friday). Cramer said he believes Thursday’s selling pressure was largely sparked by a report from The Information. The news organization reported that Anthropic is exploring a custom artificial intelligence chip with Samsung Electronics, which Cramer suggested raised concerns that major AI customers could rely less on traditional chip suppliers over time. Micron fell 5.5%, AMD lost 4.3% and Marvell Technology dropped 9.8% on Thursday. By Monday, however, buyers had returned. Intel , Arm and Broadcom are all up over 3%. Cramer’s Charitable Trust , the portfolio run by CNBC’s Investing Club, owns shares of all three stocks. Cramer said Broadcom has further room to run after the chipmaker announced it had extended its partnership with Apple through 2031 to develop and supply custom chips. Apple is one of Broadcom’s largest customers, making the agreement an important long-term win for the company, according to Cramer. Cramer has liked Broadcom for years because it’s an integral design partner on custom chips for customers including Google . “This is terrific little piece of business that they’re doing, they’re going to ace it for Apple,” he said of Broadcom. Meanwhile, Nvidia — once the leader of the AI chip trade — is largely sitting out the comeback Monday following an industry research report about delays involving the company’s next-generation Kyber rack-scale server system. With the stock trading for less than 19 times forward earnings, according to FactSet, Cramer argued the selling has become overdone. “There are so many long knives out for Nvidia,” he said. “At a certain point we have to just say, does it really deserve the same multiple as a chemical company? Doesn’t it have more upside value?”
Jim Cramer: Chip stocks are staging a revenge trade for last weeks misguided selling