The artificial intelligence race has made semiconductors the stock market’s best-performing industry in 2026, but not every ETF has benefited equally.
The gap between the strongest and weakest semiconductor ETF has stretched to nearly 40 percentage points through July 6, and it traces back to a single stock.
Over the same stretch, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH), the largest fund in the group with $70.59 billion in assets, has returned 66.2%.
The Nvidia Weight
All five funds fish from the same pond of roughly 25-50 chip names. What separates them is how much weight each assigns to Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) and the other megacaps, and Nvidia is the laggard of the year.
