TSMC's Earnings Go from 0 to 35% in One Quarter, Because Who Needs a Moore's Law Anymore?

TSMC, the biggest contract chipmaker, just dropped some serious knowledge on the market, reporting a whopping 35% year-over-year profit growth for the quarter, because who needs to follow Moore's Law when you can just magically make more money? The company's finance chief, Wendell Huang, said they expect their business to be supported by continued strong demand for their leading-edge process technologies, which is just a fancy way of saying "everyone wants a piece of that AI action." As a result, chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD saw their shares pop, with Nvidia closing up over 2% and AMD up almost 2%, while TSMC's shares jumped more than 6%. The report comes ahead of tech earnings season, which kicks off next week with Intel, and has implications for the entire industry, including Apple, Tesla, Meta, and Microsoft, who are all scheduled to announce results the following week. With the VanEck Semiconductor exchange-traded fund closing up 2% and memory storage maker Micron finishing up about 1%, it's clear that the chip industry is feeling the heat, and not just from all the transistors.