ON Semiconductor, Intel lead chips higher as earnings season awaits
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Semiconductor stocks were mostly in positive territory on Monday as investors awaited earnings season and digested a number of Wall Street research reports.
ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ:ON) paced the sector with gains of more than 4%, while Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) added more than 3%. Over the weekend, it was reported that the CEOs of Intel (INTC) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) were headed to Washington to discuss with lawmakers about the Biden Administration's curbs to China.
On Monday, the influential Semiconductor Industry Association trade group asked the Biden Administration to eschew further restrictions on semiconductor sales to China.
"Repeated steps, however, to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industryâs competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China," the SIA wrote in a statement.
Members of the SIA include AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), Broadcom (AVGO), Intel (INTC), Nvidia (NVDA), Wolfspeed (WOLF) and several other firms.
AMD (AMD) shares gained 1% even as investment firm Citi started a negative 90-day catalyst watch on the semiconductor giant.
"We expect downside to estimates driven by the correction in the data center/gaming/embedded markets (84% of C23E sales)," analyst Christopher Danely wrote in an investor brief.
Nvidia (NVDA) shares rose slightly more than 1% as Citi reiterated its buy rating and boosted its estimates on rising GPU demand.
Cohu (COHU) shares rose more than 4% on Monday as investment firm B. Riley upgraded the semiconductor equipment company and tweaked its estimates on several other chip equipment companies after coming away positive from a recent semiconductor conference. 
The firm raised its price targets on Axcelis Tech (ACLS), Applied Materials (AMAT), Camtek (CAMT), FormFactor (FORM), Ichor Holdings (ICHR), Kulicke and Soffa Industries (KLIC), Lam Research (LRCX) and Onto Innovation (ONTO) for a variety of reasons, including stabilizing demand in the sector.
Several other chip stocks rose in mid-day trading on Monday, including NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), Analog Devices (ADI), Texas Instruments (TXN), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) and Qorvo (QRVO).
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