"Semiconductor stock" isn't one thing. It's a label slapped on companies with completely different economics — and treating them as one bucket is why most retail investors get chip stocks wrong.

ARM keeps 97 cents of every dollar it earns. A memory maker can lose money on every chip in the same year. Same "sector" on your brokerage app. A hundred-point gap in gross margin.

This map plots every major chip company two ways: how much of each dollar they keep (margin) against how much they have to burn just to stay in the game (capital intensity). Flip between gross and operating margin, add companies bucket by bucket, and watch where each one actually lands.