Semiconductors Power 2026’s Top ETF Performers

If it was really Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” he was right on the money. 

History class tells us those who got rich off the gold rush weren’t the miners. The same logic goes for the artificial intelligence boom: The chipmakers have been the real winners so far this year. It’s no surprise, then, that AI-related ETFs made up nine of the 10 best-performing exchange-traded funds midway through 2026, and most offered exposure to the semiconductor industry.

The performance has been driven by “relentless demand for semiconductors, which are in limited supply and highly complicated to manufacture,” said Zachary Evens, a passive strategies analyst at Morningstar.

More Gold in Those Hills

There’s still room to run for semiconductor-linked funds and the technology sector at large, said Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research for CFRA. Earnings-per-share growth for technology companies is projected to be topped only by energy firms this year, with continued growth into next year, per CFRA research. Cooling energy prices have also eased rate hike fears, a tailwind for tech. “It’s really a combination of the fact that we’ve had very strong earnings growth and probably some motivation in interest rate hike expectations,” said Ullal.

Excluding leveraged funds, the top ETFs of this year so far, per Morningstar data, include: 

• The Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET), with a 683.8% return. The fund, which has only $17.6 million in AUM as of the closing bell on Tuesday, focuses on crude oil tanker freight futures, which spiked when the Strait of Hormuz closed after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
• The Invesco Semiconductors ETF (PSI), up 138.1%, with $2.7 billion in AUM, as investors cash in on the AI boom. 
• The VistaShares Artificial Intelligence Supercycle ETF (AIS), which had a 124.4% return and $892.6 million in assets. It holds a broader mix of AI companies beyond chipmakers.

Other top players include the First Trust Nasdaq Semiconductor ETF (FTXL), Xtrackers Semiconductor Select Equity ETF (CHPS), iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) (Korea produces the majority of the world’s semiconductors), and the YieldMax Target 12 Semiconductor Option Income ETF (SOXY). (Is the word semiconductor starting to sound weird to anyone else?)

Skewing the Data: Don’t forget about those popular geared products. Not surprisingly, leveraged ETFs had the highest gains this year, led by the Direxion Daily MU Bull 2X Shares (MUU) at a whopping 959%. But they’re, of course, incredibly volatile and not built for long-term strategies. “When we try to look at longer-term performance trends, we tend to excuse them because they tend to jump around longer with the performance,” said Ullal. “But if somebody has a short-term view on a particular sector … then leveraged ETFs are an effective way to double down on that.”

The post Semiconductors Power 2026’s Top ETF Performers appeared first on The Daily Upside.