ENTG
Entegris Inc
stock NASDAQ

That's one of the odd things about sector investing - you'd think all semiconductor ETFs would be more or less the same but some of them like to do things like "oh we only cover fabless companies" and other peculiarities.
Regarding SOXX and SMH, I went with SOXX primarily because it was a little more well diversified and equal weight compared to how top-heavy SMH is. Like, I already own NVDA and AVGO through my large cap ETF, and I'm looking for semiconductors on a whole moreso than just overweighting those two even more(disclosure: I also own them both in my actively traded account).
Forgive the slop for a second, but I did use an LLM to parse the data for a more thorough comparison beyond my own opinion:
SMH says: **own the largest, most liquid industry leaders harder.**
SOXX says: **own the semiconductor ecosystem more evenly.**
# Meaningful holdings SMH has that SOXX does not appear to emphasize
Based on the current VanEck list and the current top SOXX holdings list, these are the most meaningful SMH differentiators:
* **SNPS** — Synopsys
* **CDNS** — Cadence Design Systems
* **ARM** — Arm Holdings
* **STM** — STMicroelectronics
* **SWKS** — Skyworks Solutions
SNPS and CDNS are especially important because they add **EDA/software-like semiconductor infrastructure exposure**, not just chip designers/manufacturers. ARM adds architecture/IP exposure. VanEck’s official holdings list includes SNPS, CDNS, ARM, STM, and SWKS.
# Meaningful holdings SOXX has that SMH does not appear to emphasize
Based on the current SOXX top-25 list and SMH’s full listed holdings, SOXX gives you more exposure to:
* **CRDO** — Credo Technology
* **ENTG** — Entegris
* **MTSI** — MACOM Technology Solutions
* **ASX** — ASE Technology
* **NVMI** — Nova Ltd.
SOXX also has **more weight in AMD/MU/MRVL relative to SMH**, while SMH has much more in NVDA and TSM. SOXX’s visible top-25 list includes CRDO, ENTG, MTSI, ASX, and Nova; SMH’s official list does not include those names in its listed daily holdings.

\~slop ended\~
I don't think either is a bad choice, by any means. This just comes down to, again, what I was making a decision on with the context of the rest of my portfolio at play. And as a tinkerer I actually want to do a deeper dig into the other major(and minor?) semiconductor ETFs out there to see if there's a gem I'm missing out on that does something particularly unique.

That's one of the odd things about sector investing - you'd think all semiconductor ETFs would be more or less the same but some of them like to do things like "oh we only cover fabless companies" and other peculiarities.
Regarding SOXX and SMH, I went with SOXX primarily because it was a little more well diversified and equal weight compared to how top-heavy SMH is. Like, I already own NVDA and AVGO through my large cap ETF, and I'm looking for semiconductors on a whole moreso than just overweighting those two even more(disclosure: I also own them both in my actively traded account).
Forgive the slop for a second, but I did use an LLM to parse the data for a more thorough comparison beyond my own opinion:
SMH says: **own the largest, most liquid industry leaders harder.**
SOXX says: **own the semiconductor ecosystem more evenly.**
# Meaningful holdings SMH has that SOXX does not appear to emphasize
Based on the current VanEck list and the current top SOXX holdings list, these are the most meaningful SMH differentiators:
* **SNPS** — Synopsys
* **CDNS** — Cadence Design Systems
* **ARM** — Arm Holdings
* **STM** — STMicroelectronics
* **SWKS** — Skyworks Solutions
SNPS and CDNS are especially important because they add **EDA/software-like semiconductor infrastructure exposure**, not just chip designers/manufacturers. ARM adds architecture/IP exposure. VanEck’s official holdings list includes SNPS, CDNS, ARM, STM, and SWKS.
# Meaningful holdings SOXX has that SMH does not appear to emphasize
Based on the current SOXX top-25 list and SMH’s full listed holdings, SOXX gives you more exposure to:
* **CRDO** — Credo Technology
* **ENTG** — Entegris
* **MTSI** — MACOM Technology Solutions
* **ASX** — ASE Technology
* **NVMI** — Nova Ltd.
SOXX also has **more weight in AMD/MU/MRVL relative to SMH**, while SMH has much more in NVDA and TSM. SOXX’s visible top-25 list includes CRDO, ENTG, MTSI, ASX, and Nova; SMH’s official list does not include those names in its listed daily holdings.

\~slop ended\~
I don't think either is a bad choice, by any means. This just comes down to, again, what I was making a decision on with the context of the rest of my portfolio at play. And as a tinkerer I actually want to do a deeper dig into the other major(and minor?) semiconductor ETFs out there to see if there's a gem I'm missing out on that does something particularly unique.