Mid-Year Review: US Top 10 Skyrocketing ETFs Released — One Up Nearly 1000%! Memory & Chips Take Center Stage
S&P 500 index SPX | 0.00 | |
Direxion Daily MU Bull 2X ETF MUU | 0.00 | |
Semiconductor Bull 3X Direxion SOXL | 0.00 | |
GraniteShares ETF Trust GraniteShares 2x Long AMD Daily ETF AMDL | 0.00 | |
Direxion Daily South Korea Bull 3X Shares KORU | 0.00 |
In the first half of 2026, the S&P 500 index(SPX.US) index rallied continuously, repeatedly hitting new milestone highs. Behind this index performance, the semiconductor and memory sectors emerged as the core investment themes. Industry and leveraged ETFs related to semiconductors and tech stocks became the biggest winners of the first half, with their returns significantly leading the market.
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US Stock ETFs Top 10 Gainers (H1 2026)
Memory, semiconductor, and related single-stock ETFs completely dominated the leaderboard. Below is the complete data for the top 10 performing US stock ETFs from January 1 to June 30, 2026, filtered to include only assets with an AUM of $100 million or more:
| Rank | Ticker | H1 2026 Performance | AUM (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Direxion Daily MU Bull 2X ETF(MUU.US) | +946.76% | $1.42B |
| 02 | Semiconductor Bull 3X Direxion(SOXL.US) | +534.57% | $16.95B |
| 03 | GraniteShares ETF Trust GraniteShares 2x Long AMD Daily ETF(AMDL.US) | +432.15% | $547M |
| 04 | Direxion Daily South Korea Bull 3X Shares(KORU.US) | +330.36% | $1.55B |
| 05 | Roundhill Memory ETF(DRAM.US) | +173.52% | $26.21B |
| 06 | Invesco Semiconductors ETF(PSI.US) | +138.20% | $1.99B |
| 07 | First Trust Nasdaq Semiconductor ETF(FTXL.US) | +120.03% | $1.49B |
| 08 | Direxion Daily TSM Bull 2X Shares(TSMX.US) | +113.80% | $539M |
| 09 | PHLX Sox Semiconductor Sector Ishares(SOXX.US) | +113.00% | $17.52B |
| 10 | iShares MSCI South Korea ETF(EWY.US) | +107.67% | $17.95B |
It is worth noting that leveraged ETFs account for nearly half of the top performers, highlighting the variety of trading tools available in the US market. Whether utilizing 2x leveraged single-stock ETFs or 3x leveraged industry index ETFs, investors can easily participate in high-elasticity directional trading. Consequently, as memory, chips, and tech stocks entered strong unilateral bull runs, the gains of these leveraged ETFs were amplified significantly.
Risk Warning on Leveraged ETFs:
Leveraged ETFs typically track the daily leveraged return of an underlying asset. Their cumulative returns over a longer period will not simply equal 2x or 3x the total return of the underlying asset due to daily compounding effects, rebalancing, and volatility decay.
Market Outlook & Institutional Views on US Tech
Following the massive first-half rally, global semiconductor and storage supply chains have experienced recent pullbacks. Wall Street institutions suggest focusing on lower-valuation sectors while warning of potential short-term AI overheating.
Bank of America: Speculative Sentiment Reaching Extremes, Watch for Correction Risks
BofA maintains its year-end 2026 S&P 500 target at 7,100 points. However, analysts warn that contrarian indicators show extreme speculation, with high-valuation stocks exhibiting unsustainable gaps. Furthermore, free cash flow-to-net income ratios among S&P 500 firms are historically low, primarily because hyper-scalers are aggressively ramping up AI capital expenditures, dragging down overall earnings quality.
Morgan Stanley: Time to "Sell Chips, Buy Cloud"; Storage is Peaking Like Silver
Morgan Stanley's Chief US Equity Strategist advises trimming semiconductor exposure and rotating into hyper-scale cloud providers. The firm views the recent chip cooling as the fourth healthy sector rotation within this AI investment cycle. They anticipate market leadership will diffuse from immediate AI capex beneficiaries to a broader array of sectors as the US economic expansion continues.
Citi: Chip Stock Outlook Diverges; Bullish on Micron, Bearish on Qualcomm
Citi analysts note that AI computing demand remains fundamentally supply-constrained, as evidenced by a recent 20% price hike in AWS EC2 GPU instances. They identify DRAM shortages as the primary bottleneck for current compute supply. Citi favors AMD for its potential to gain GPU market share in H2, Texas Instruments for its power management chip supply to Nvidia, and Applied Materials due to a favorable DRAM business mix and attractive valuation.