Philadelphia Semiconductor Index - SOX
Categories: Metrics, Index Funds
Semiconductors are the little chips that run computers. Kind of the brains behind the machine. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, or PHLX Semiconductor Index, tracks 30 of the most important players in the industry.
The ticker symbol for the index is SOX, which is more of a Boston or Chicago thing, rather than a Philly thing...but we'll let that slide. The Philadelphia part of it, by the way, doesn't have much to do with the city. It's not like the index tracks only semiconductor makers from the City of Brotherly Love. It's just that the index is compiled by the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.
As personal computers and the Internet were clearly becoming a big deal in the 1990s, the SOX became a key gauge of the technology space. It first began in 1993 and was widely followed and traded during the dot-com and tech boom of the following decade. Tech moved on a bit from there, moving the index away from the epicenter of all tech trading. But it remains a key indicator for the tech space even now.
The SOX has always been known for its volatile moves...big swings prompted by the fact that individual index components can have wide variations in performance. Like, one quarter, a company could post a profit of $3 per share...next quarter, a loss of $1.40 per share. Big swings in the individual stock price, contributing to big swings in the SOX.
Big names in the index include Intel, Micron Technology, QUALCOMM, and Advanced Micro Devices.
