Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares backed off 12-year highs to close lower Thursday, playing the contrarian chip stock as the rest of the chip sector rebounded from a recent selloff.
All year, AMD AMD, -5.37% shares have been setting fresh 12-year highs, rising to levels not seen since 2006, when the stock traded as high as $42.70 that March, only to crash down to $16.90 by late July of that year. On Thursday, the stock traded as high as $34.14, a 6% gain, but swung down midday to finish 5.4% lower at $30.48.
AMD shares were the most actively traded on the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.53% — a common occurrence of late — at volume of more than 301 million shares; the second-most actively traded stock was Micron Technology Inc. MU, +4.50% , with more than 59 million shares exchanging hands. For the past 52 weeks, AMD and Micron, on average, have been the third- and fourth-most active traded stocks at 66.2 million shares and 44.5 million shares, respectively, on the S&P 500 index.
Even with Thursday’s pullback, AMD shares are still up 11% for the week, compared to the PHLX Semiconductor Index’s SOX, +1.20% 0.1% gain. AMD’s stock price has been on an unprecedented run over the past 98 trading days, rallying more than 220%, and are up 197% for the year. That puts AMD’s stock run in the league with some of its best yearly stretches.
Read: AMD short sellers gutted by ‘stealthy short squeeze’
On Thursday, FBN Securities initiated an outperform rating and a $40 price target on AMD’s stock. Shares closed above $30 for the first time in more than 12 years Tuesday after Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann hiked his price target on AMD to $40 from $30.
Micron, on the other hand, finished up 4.5% at $43.62, following a punishing stretch that left the stock down 2.8% on the week despite Thursday’s gain.
The SOX index closed up 1.2% Thursday, while the S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.75% gained 0.8%. The SOX index, which had been up as much as 15% on the year, is now up 8.7% year to date, compared with an 8.6% gain in the S&P 500 and a 16.1% gain for the Nasdaq.
Nvidia Corp. NVDA, +1.17% shares closed up 1.2% after the chip maker announced new AI uses for its chips based on its Turing architecture.
Chip stocks that rose 2% or more Thursday included Qualcomm Inc. QCOM, +3.99% , Skyworks Solutions Inc. SWKS, +3.37% , Broadcom Inc. AVGO, +2.41% , Qorvo Inc. QRVO, +2.50% and Teradyne Inc. TER, +2.02% .
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