The semis have been crushed this month, but one stock remains in the green: Advanced Micro.
AMD has risen more than 1% in May, shaking off the SMH semiconductor ETF's 14% slump. It's also up 102% over the past 12 months, while the SMH ETF has fallen 8%.
"AMD is definitely the star that shines within the SMH group," Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, said Thursday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "Analysts are saying they have a better product for the first time in 50 years than Intel does, and they're getting a tremendous amount of love as a result."
Schlossberg sees another catalyst driving the AMD rally: bitcoin's resurgence.
"We've had a very strong rally in bitcoin. Bitcoin was a big driver of the semi rally when it rallied the first time, so if we get bitcoin over $10,000, we can get it back to that mania of mining again, and that should be an additional tailwind for AMD. So I think AMD is very well positioned," said Schlossberg.
AMD's graphics chips have the capacity to power bitcoin mining, which requires fast processors, so as bitcoin demand grows, the need for AMD chips also climbs. The cryptocurrency has rallied 126% in the past three months, to above $8,000, a gain of more than $4,000.
Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, says the rest of the semis space could see a rebound, though it may prove short-lived.
"The semis have sold off very hard this month. They're getting oversold. They're just below their 200-day moving average but not enough to really cause a major problem," said Maley during the same segment. "They could see a little bit of a bounce here in the near term, especially since Intel, which is by far the biggest weighting in the SMH with a 12% weighting, it's incredibly oversold."
The SMH ETF's relative strength index is trading at 33, while Intel's RSI is 35. Any level approaching 30 or below is considered oversold.
"However, on a longer-term basis, you look at its weekly RSI, the SMH is not very oversold, so I think it's going to have some more downside here over time and, therefore, if you want to look at the group overall you're really going to have to pick your individual stocks," said Maley.
On a weekly basis, the SMH ETF's RSI sits at 42, above the threshold suggesting oversold conditions. It traded with a lower RSI at the beginning of the year.
