I saw Michael Keaton this weekend play Ray Kroc of McDonald’s (good movie) and it reminded me of his best role as Bill Blazejowski in Night Shift. He carried a tape recorder to tape things because he was an ‘idea man’. One idea was to feed mayonnaise to live tuna – in order to just speed up the process of making tuna fish!

Right now semiconductors are all the rage on Wall Street. Generally, they have been cyclical stocks and heartbreakers, but winning is winning and they are winning.

Machine learning, Internet of Things, Voice, Self Driving Cars, Virtual Reality, Thermo Nuclear War are all on the growth table right now and so no signs of slowing down. The world loves their machines and gadgets – so the right semiconductor stocks show no sign of slowing down in a post smartphone era.

In Bill Blazejowski speak it makes sense as to why the companies that sell equipment to the semiconductor companies are starting to outperform on a relative basis.

Here is a chart displaying the action:

One of my favorite charts in #ChartSummit via @AriWald – Semi's relative to Tech – GREAT CHART #SOX $SMH $XLK $QQQ

— J.C. Parets (@allstarcharts) Jan. 28 at 02:36 PM

I have no idea how long this lasts but I thought the money flow and relative strength was interesting all the way around.

Applied Materials is one of the biggest and oldest of these companies and their stocks ($AMAT).

Disclosure – I own the index $SMH but avoid the individual stocks because of my lack of deep understanding of the industry.