KLA Corp Is Up 150% YTD and the Chip Party Might Just Be Getting Started

$KLAC surged 9% in a single session and is now up ~150% year-to-date, riding South Korea's $500B+ AI chip investment wave tied to Samsung and SK Hynix. Bloomberg Intelligence counts $2 trillion in combined hyperscaler backlog — and UBS thinks the chip equipment market hits $250B by 2028. $ASML finished 7% higher in Amsterdam on the same news. The SOX index just posted its best quarter ever. This isn't hype — it's infrastructure spend with a paper trail.

Meanwhile, YouTube's Bloomberg channels are flashing a yellow flag: Taiwan margin loans are up 160% and just hit all-time highs that eclipse dot-com bubble levels. Retail investors in Korea are pouring $9 billion into leveraged single-stock ETFs on names like SK Hynix. The fundamentals are real, but the sentiment is running hot enough to melt your face off.

Then there's $NKE — down 36%+ year-to-date, still can't sell sneakers at full price, and somehow managed to disappoint even after beating estimates. At some point a turnaround stops being a turnaround and just becomes the new normal.