TSMC Official Refuses to Rule Out Price Hikes
Is the semiconductor boom a fundamentals-driven bull cycle with years to run or a surge on the verge of unwinding?
Above: The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's Fab 20 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Mar. 28. Image credit: Daniel Ceng/Anadolu/Getty Images
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
The demand for AI infrastructure and semiconductors is nowhere near a bubble. This bull cycle has far more room to run than Wall Street is pricing in. S&P 500 earnings, for example, are on track toward $650 by 2031, driven by real structural demand, not hype. As the fundamentals demonstrate, the doomers calling for this the end of the road are simply wrong.
Establishment-critical narrative
The semiconductor boom looks a lot shakier than the headlines suggest, with revenues exploding not because of broad-based demand but rather soaring average selling prices. It's also an industry that, bar AI data center chips, is growing at perfectly ordinary rates. When data center spending cools and new memory capacity hits the market, this surge will unwind fast.
