PHLX Semiconductor Sector

The PHLX Semiconductor Sector (SOX) is a price-weighted stock market index composed of 19 companies primarily involved in the design, distribution, manufacture, and sale of semiconductors.

History

The index was set to an initial value of 200 on December 1, 1993 and was split two-for-one on July 24, 1995; options commenced trading on September 7, 1994.

Components

For the different components individual weightings in the index see link to the weightings site listed below under External links.

* Altera Corp.
* Applied Materials, Inc.
* Advanced Micro Devices
* Broadcom Corporation
* Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
* Infineon Technologies AG
* Intel Corp.
* KLA-Tencor Corp.
* Linear Technology Corp.
* Marvell Technology Group
* Micron Technology, Inc.
* Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.
* National Semiconductor Corp.
* Novellus Systems, Inc.
* STMicroelectronics NV
* Teradyne, Inc.
* Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
* Texas Instruments, Inc.
* Xilinx, Inc.

Investing

Apart from investing in the individual stocks there is also the option to invest in a so called Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). As of today there is no ETF with the exact same components and weightings of the SOX index, but as a proxy for investing there is an ETF called Semiconductor HOLDRS (SMH) issued by Merill Lynch which is based on the market capital weighted Semiconductor HOLDRs Index. This ETF is traded every day during market hours on the American Stock Exchange.

*Information (components, investing, performance, prospectus, weightings etc.) about this ETF can be found on [http://www.holdrs.com/holdrs/main/index.asp?Action=HOLDROutstanding&SubAction=SMH&HoldrName=Semiconductor%A0HOLDRS this page] .

* [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SMH&t=5y Yahoo!: Chart of SMH performance (past five years)]

* [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SMH&t=2y&l=off&z=l&q=l&c=%5ESOXX Yahoo!: Chart of SMH vs SOX performance (past two years)]

External links

* [http://www.phlx.com/products/sox.html The Philadelphia Stock Exchange infopage about the SOX index]
* [http://www.phlx.com/products/sectors/soxcomp.htm Component weightings]

Performance

* [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5ESOXX&t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= Yahoo!: Chart of SOX performance (1995 - present time)]