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The Nasdaq 100 is up roughly 6% year-to-date. The SMH, the cleanest semiconductor benchmark, prints around 27.5%. The Closelook Rubin Build-Out 100 — our index of the AI hardware supply chain — is up 65% equal-weight and just under 90% on the momentum variant.
That spread is the story. Not that semis are running. Semis always run in AI cycles. The story is that the specific supply-chain layers we mapped in the Rubin index are running harder than any broad ETF captures. The Nasdaq dilutes the signal with software, consumer, and services exposure. The SMH averages across the entire chip complex. Rubin isolates the AI infrastructure supply chain and nothing else.
The sector breakdown YTD shows why
The top five Rubin sectors year-to-date: High-Speed Interconnects +124%, Memory (HBM & NAND) +107%, Advanced Materials +99%, Substrates & Interposers +94%, Testing & Metrology +78%. Those are the Early Ramp layers of the Rubin GPU cycle — the layers our Generation Rotation Framework predicted would lead first. They led.
The bottom three: Wafer Processing +3%, EDA & Chip IP +16%, Architects (Chip Design) +16%. That is the Sunset of the prior cycle — Hopper-era leaders absorbing capital rotation away from them. Also predicted by the framework.
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