Forem: Kiwon Song

Korean Stocks Up 3x in a Year. Where Does This End? Data on TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, AMD

Kiwon Song — Mon, 11 May 2026 18:15:48 +0000

May 12, 2026 · 7 min read · Originally posted on stockdigging.com

📌 All figures in this article are objective data points read directly from the comparison page on stockdigging.com. Nothing here constitutes a buy or sell recommendation. Investment decisions are solely your responsibility.

Five semiconductor names: TSMC, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Micron, AMD. Five years of data. Let's see what the numbers actually say — and at the end, I'll be honest about how the numbers feel to me, sitting in Korea and watching this play out without participating.

1. Top of the market cap list — semiconductors are already there

Looking at the global market cap leaderboard, seven of the top 17 publicly listed companies are semiconductor names — including NVIDIA, which sits above the frame shown below.

Global market cap ranking (#6–#17) — TSMC ($2.13T), Broadcom ($2.04T), Samsung ($1.15T), SK hynix ($909.56B), Micron ($840.14B), AMD ($741.96B). NVIDIA sits above this frame.

NVIDIA (largest of the seven, above the frame)
TSMC: $2.13T
Broadcom: $2.04T
Samsung Electronics: $1.15T
SK hynix: $909.56B
Micron Technology: $840.14B
Advanced Micro Devices: $741.96B

That's seven out of the top seventeen — over 40% of the global market cap leaderboard.

NVIDIA sits above the frame of this image. The five names tracked from here on are TSMC, Samsung, SK hynix, Micron, and AMD.

2. Year-to-date — four out of five are up triple digits

Through May 2026, YTD cumulative returns:

YTD cumulative return — SK hynix +177.70%, Micron +136.76%, Samsung +122.18%, AMD +103.69%, TSMC +28.75%.

SK hynix: +177.70%
Micron: +136.76%
Samsung Electronics: +122.18%
AMD: +103.69%
TSMC: +28.75%

For context, the KOSPI is up +81.51% YTD and the S&P 500 is up +7.88%. Four of the five names sit above both benchmarks; TSMC sits between the KOSPI and the S&P 500.

3. Three-year view — SK hynix and Micron lead the group

Zooming out to 2023 → 2026:

3Y cumulative return — SK hynix +2,055.96%, Micron +1,140.97%, TSMC +383.79%, AMD +378.84%, Samsung +345.40%.

SK hynix: +2,055.96%
Micron: +1,140.97%
TSMC: +383.79%
AMD: +378.84%
Samsung Electronics: +345.40%

SK hynix is up roughly 20x. Micron more than 11x. The other three are between 4.4x and 4.8x. Next, the revenue and operating income figures.

4. Revenue — Samsung leads every year

5-year revenue bar chart. Samsung's bar is the tallest every year. FY2025: Samsung $226.87B, TSMC $124.15B, SK hynix $66.07B, Micron $37.38B, AMD $34.64B.

Samsung Electronics has the tallest revenue bar in every year of the five-year window. FY2025 figures:

Samsung: $226.87B
TSMC: $124.15B
SK hynix: $66.07B
Micron: $37.38B
AMD: $34.64B

Samsung's revenue is roughly 1.8x TSMC, 3.4x SK hynix, 6x Micron, and 6.5x AMD.

5. Operating income — the picture flips

5-year operating income chart. TSMC's bar is the tallest in FY2025. SK hynix and Micron show negative op. income in FY2023 and large positives in FY2025.

Move from top line to operating income and the rankings change:

FY2023 was the trough year — SK hynix and Micron both posted negative operating income.
In FY2025, TSMC's operating income bar is the tallest in the chart.
SK hynix moved from a loss in FY2023 to a large positive in FY2025.
Samsung's FY2025 op. income bar is shorter than TSMC's, despite Samsung's larger revenue.
AMD's op. income bar is the smallest among the five in FY2025.

On the operating income line, Samsung's lead from the revenue chart disappears. TSMC, SK hynix, and Micron post higher operating margins (53.25%, 48.59%, 48.52%) than Samsung (13.07%) and AMD (10.67%).

6. The full metric snapshot

Full comparison table across Size, Value, Profitability, Financial Health. Leaders are marked with ✓ in each row.

Per-name analysis of the same table follows in §7.

7. Strengths and weaknesses

TSMC — most profitable, most cash. Weakest YTD.

Op margin 53.25%, net income $55.99B — both highest.
Cash $89.03B, FCF $35.41B — both largest.
EV/EBITDA 23.42x, Net Debt/EBITDA 0.39x — both lowest.
Weakness: YTD +28.75% — lowest of the five.

Samsung — largest by scale, lowest per-dollar profitability.

Revenue $226.87B (1.8x TSMC), largest total assets and workforce.
Weakness: Op margin 13.07%, ROE 10.36% — bottom half of the group.
Bright spot: P/B 4.46x — lowest, the cheapest on price-to-book.

SK hynix — strongest returns and cheapest P/E. Highest leverage.

3Y +2,055.96%, YTD +177.70% — both highest.
Op margin 48.59%, ROE 35.57%, P/E 31.89x (lowest) — profitable and still cheap after a 20x run.
Weakness: debt ratio 48.43% — highest of the five.

Micron — strongest growth and ROE. Smallest absolute earnings.

Revenue growth 85.55%, ROE 40.84%, PEG 0.40x — all best-in-group.
Catch: net income $8.54B, FCF $1.67B — smallest of the five.

AMD — cleanest balance sheet. Highest valuation, weakest profitability.

Debt ratio 22.11%, current ratio 2.85x — safest balance sheet of the five.
Disconnect: P/E 170.53x (5x the others), ROE 7.18%, Op margin 10.67% — both lowest.

Cross-reference — revenue growth lines up with 3-year return

By FY2025 revenue growth: Micron (85.55%) → SK hynix (46.76%) → AMD (34.34%) → TSMC (31.35%) → Samsung (10.88%).
By 3Y return: SK hynix (+2,055.96%) → Micron (+1,140.97%) → TSMC (+383.79%) → AMD (+378.84%) → Samsung (+345.40%).
Top and bottom match; the middle reshuffles.
Operating margin doesn't follow — TSMC has the highest margin but the lowest YTD.

So… is anything still cheap here?

The data tells a different story for each name:

TSMC: highest operating margin, largest cash, lowest EV/EBITDA, lowest YTD return. Market cap $2.13T.
Samsung Electronics: largest revenue and assets, lowest P/B (4.46x), highest FCF Yield (2.24%). Operating margin 13.07% and ROE 10.36% — in the lower half of the group.
SK hynix: highest 3Y return (+2,055.96%), lowest P/E (31.89x). Highest debt ratio (48.43%).
Micron: highest ROE (40.84%) and revenue growth (85.55%), lowest PEG (0.40x). Smallest absolute net income ($8.54B) and FCF ($1.67B) in the group.
AMD: lowest debt ratio (22.11%). P/E 170.53x — the highest in the group.

Five names, five different profiles. On traditional value multiples (P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA), SK hynix, Samsung, and TSMC sit at the lower end of the group, while Micron and AMD trade at higher multiples — Micron with a PEG of 0.40x, AMD with a P/E of 170.53x.

And here's the personal part. I'm Korean. I'm not an investor — I'm hooked on vibe coding and busy building a stock website while watching all of this happen. Most of the move came in roughly the last year — the KOSPI itself is up more than 3x in that window.

Korea right now is obsessed with stocks. It's the topic at lunch, on the subway. Almost everyone I know is buying, and most of them keep buying more. The FOMO is real, and I don't pretend it isn't.

🤔 What's your read on these five? Look at the data on stockdigging.com/compare and decide for yourself. No targets, no recommendations — just numbers.

Tags: semiconductors stocks data investing korea
Originally published at stockdigging.com.

US Top 5 by Market Cap — NVIDIA, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon: The Numbers Tell a Different Story

Kiwon Song — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:24:37 +0000

📌 All figures in this article are objective data points. Nothing here constitutes a buy or sell recommendation. Investment decisions are solely your responsibility.

NVIDIA, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon — the five most valuable companies on the US stock market. Their combined market cap is roughly $20 trillion. We all "know" these companies, but lay 31 metrics side by side and the numbers tell a different story than the headlines.

1-year returns — Alphabet +159%, Microsoft the only one in the red

We start every stock at the same baseline (0%) and chart the cumulative return over the past year.

The standout is Alphabet at +159.42%. Long dismissed as falling behind in AI search and cloud, Google ended up topping this group — driven by Gemini's improvements and a recovery in YouTube and ad revenue.

At the other end, Microsoft at -2.12% is the only stock in the group that lost ground over the year. The market's read: Azure growth post-Copilot fell short of expectations. NVIDIA's +80.61% is still excellent in absolute terms, but it's only second place here.

One thing worth pausing on: these are companies with market caps of $3T–$5T each. A $100B company posting +80% in a year would be front-page news. The most-followed, most-institutionally-held companies in the world delivered these returns in a single year. 2025 was clearly not an ordinary year.

💡 The Index Comparison tab on StockDigging lets you overlay S&P 500 and NASDAQ on the same chart. A quick check of how much each stock outperformed the broader market.

Size and value — the most valuable company has the smallest revenue

The metrics table compares all 31 indicators across categories. The best value in each row gets a ✓.

On size, there's an interesting paradox. NVIDIA leads market cap at $5.14T, but its revenue of $215.94B is the lowest of the five. Revenue is led by Amazon ($716.92B), total assets also Amazon ($818.04B), and headcount also Amazon (1.57 million). Amazon sweeps all three "scale" metrics — yet its market cap of $2.90T is the smallest of the five. A textbook case of "biggest company ≠ most valuable company."

On valuation, PEG stands out. NVIDIA's PEG of 0.65x is the lowest in the group. P/E alone (42.79x) looks expensive, but factoring in 65% revenue growth, it's actually the cheapest on a growth-adjusted basis. On raw P/E, Microsoft at 26.23x is the cheapest.

Profitability and financial health

On profitability, ROE is led by Apple at 159.94% — higher than NVIDIA's 104.37%. The reason: decades of buybacks have driven Apple's book equity to extremely low levels, mechanically inflating ROE. On operating margin and revenue growth, NVIDIA dominates with 60.38% and 65.47% respectively.

On financial health, Apple's debt ratio of 330% is by far the highest. That's not a warning sign — Apple generates $98.77B in annual FCF and uses that cash for ongoing buybacks. Leverage here is a deliberate strategy, not a weakness. NVIDIA, by contrast, has a debt ratio of 31.48% and net debt/EBITDA of 0.08x — the cleanest balance sheet in the group.

On dividends, Microsoft leads with a yield of 0.81%, and Alphabet's dividend growth of 38.77% is the highest. Amazon doesn't pay one. Big tech yields are structurally low for a reason — these companies funnel free cash into R&D, infrastructure, and buybacks rather than dividends. If income is your goal, telecom, energy, financials, and REITs are typically the better fit.

Revenue trend — Amazon's dominant scale, NVIDIA's vertical climb

Two patterns jump out from the revenue time series. First, Amazon is the largest by revenue across every period, hitting $716.92B in FY2025 — well ahead of #2 Apple at $416.16B. Second, NVIDIA was the smallest in FY2022–2023, then inflects almost vertically from FY2024 onward. AI data center demand rewrote the company's scale in a span of two years — visible directly in the data.

Alphabet and Microsoft show steady growth. Apple has the largest absolute revenue but the slowest growth, at +10.07%.

Try it yourself

The compare feature on StockDigging is free for everyone, no login required. Plug in your own list of stocks and you'll see returns, metrics, and financial trends on a single page.

Open the comparison for these 5 stocks →

Have a stock combination you'd like analyzed, or a metric you wish were included? Feedback is always welcome.

Stuck Picking Stocks? Composite Ranking + 6 Quick Sort Presets

Kiwon Song — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:20:45 +0000

⚠️ Before we start: nothing in this post is a stock recommendation. StockDigging ranks every stock by each metric and sorts them by the lowest sum of those ranks. A sorted list is not a recommendation. It is a data processing result, and it doesn't include any qualitative or external factors.

1. "How do I find stocks that fit this idea?"

A common question for any stock investor:

"A high-quality company that's also undervalued and growing"
"A reliable dividend payer that's not at risk of going bust"
"A value stock with low P/B and strong equity"

Each of these requires looking at multiple metrics at once.

StockDigging makes that one-click via Composite Ranking.

2. How does Composite Ranking work?

The mechanism is simple:

You pick 2–5 metrics (e.g., ROE, P/E, Revenue Growth)
Every stock in the market is ranked by each metric individually
Each stock's rank scores are summed up
Stocks are sorted by the lowest sum first

Example:

Stock A ranks ROE 5th + P/E 12th + Revenue Growth 30th = sum of 47.
Stock B ranks ROE 3rd + P/E 50th + Revenue Growth 8th = sum of 61.
→ A appears above B.

💡 Important: this sort is purely a math operation. It does not mean A is a "better stock" than B — only that A's combined rank-sum across the chosen metrics is lower. If you weigh one metric more heavily, just sort by that single metric.

3. Quick Sort — when you don't know which metrics to combine

The strength of Composite Ranking is freedom of metric choice. But that's also its weakness:

"Out of 31 metrics, which combination is actually meaningful?"

That's why we added Quick Sort: 6 preset investment lenses, each auto-selecting 5 metrics with one click.

Important: these 6 are not "answers" — they're starting points. Begin with a preset and customize from there by adding or removing metrics.

3-1. Quality Growth

Lens: sustainable alpha through high entry barriers and operational efficiency

Metric	What it captures
Revenue Growth	Scalability of the business model
Op Margin	Cost-structure efficiency + pricing power
ROE	Profit generation per unit of equity
FCF Yield	Real cash conversion of accounting earnings
Market Cap	Industry dominance + institutional liquidity stability

Looks for stocks satisfying revenue growth + margin + capital efficiency simultaneously.

3-2. GARP (Growth at a Reasonable Price)

Lens: balance between growth and value metrics

Metric	What it captures
PEG	Price relative to growth (under 1.0 = undervalued)
P/E	Price relative to earnings
Op Margin	Margin retention from core business
Debt Ratio	Financial leverage discipline
Net Income	Absolute scale of bottom-line earnings

Find growth stocks without overpaying. Peter Lynch's PEG concept is the centerpiece.

3-3. Cash-Cow

Lens: sustainable shareholder return based on robust cash generation

Metric	What it captures
Dividend Yield	Direct measure of cash inflow vs. principal
FCF Yield	Self-sustaining dividend payment capacity
ROE	Underlying basis for dividend capacity
Net Debt/EBITDA	Debt servicing ability
Trading Value	Market liquidity (ease of entry/exit)

Targets sustainable dividends, not just high-yield outliers.

3-4. Blue-Chip

Lens: market dominance + financial soundness

Metric	What it captures
Market Cap	Firm size
Net Income	Absolute earnings scale
Op Margin	Competitive edge (margin level)
Debt Ratio	Capital structure stability
ROE	Capital efficiency retained at maturity

For investors who prefer large-cap stability over high-volatility plays.

3-5. Deep Value

Lens: extreme undervaluation vs. liquidation/intrinsic value

Metric	What it captures
P/B	Price relative to book net assets
Total Equity	Base capital scale
Current Ratio	Short-term debt coverage
Net Debt/EBITDA	Insolvency risk filter
ROE	Minimum profitability to dodge value traps

Benjamin Graham-style value investing. The point is filtering out value traps via Current Ratio + ROE.

3-6. Earnings Momentum

Lens: synchronized earnings improvement and price trends

Metric	What it captures
From 52W High	Trend strength (proximity to highs)
30D Return	Short-term capital inflow velocity
Revenue Growth	Business expansion supporting price action
Net Income	Qualitative earnings growth
ROE	Capital efficiency acceleration

Not pure chart momentum — looks for stocks where fundamentals and price are moving together.

4. Customize — from preset to your own style

The 6 Quick Sort presets are just starting points.

Drop Market Cap if size doesn't matter to you, swap in another metric
Replace Debt Ratio with Net Debt/EBITDA
Add Dividend Yield to build a "growth + dividend" hybrid

Metric chips toggle on a single click. Adjust freely on the same screen.

Composite Ranking also pairs with range filters. Example: narrow down candidates with "P/E between 5 and 15 + ROE ≥ 10%", then sort that subset by your composite ranking.

5. Once more — sorting is not recommending

StockDigging does not provide price targets
StockDigging does not give buy/sell calls
The 6 Quick Sort strategies are not "the right answer"
Composite Ranking results are not a recommendation list

The tool does exactly one thing: processes market data and presents it through your chosen lens.

6. Try it yourself

Open the StockDigging home page and click the "Quick Sort" button above the sort chips. Pick one of the 6 presets, see the result, then adjust to your own taste.

👉 stockdigging.com/en

Got feedback or a preset you'd like to see? Let me know.

Tags: #webdev #investing #finance #productivity

[Boost]

Kiwon Song — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:01:23 +0000

Kiwon Song

May 1

I Built a Stock Screener Because Financial Sites Keep Adding Features I Don't Need

#webdev #python #react #javascript

Comments

4 min read

I Built a Stock Screener Because Financial Sites Keep Adding Features I Don't Need

Kiwon Song — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:01:03 +0000

Subtitle: A clean stock screener for anyone who just wants the data.

Every time I opened a stock site, the same thought hit me.

"More features than ever — so why is it harder to answer a simple question?"

Yahoo Finance, TradingView, Investing.com, Bloomberg. Each is a great tool. Yet every year, more features get added, screens get more crowded, and navigation gets trickier. Meanwhile, a simple question like "Among the top 100 stocks by market cap, who's up the most today?" takes four clicks and two tabs.

Information is not the problem. There's too much of it — and it's buried under popups, ad banners, and features I'll never use.

So I built StockDigging — the simplest way I know to rank, filter, and compare stocks. Just the data you actually need.

One screen. That's it.

You open the page and everything is there — sort options, filters, and the ranking table. No popups, no ad banners, no notification overlays.

Sort chips are organized into 8 categories: Size, Value, Profitability, Financial Health, Dividend, Performance, Trading, and Flow. Click one chip and the entire table re-ranks. Under a second.

31 metrics. Not 100.

Most financial sites list 50–100 metrics. In practice, maybe 5–10 actually drive decisions. I picked 31 and stopped.

Size — Market Cap, Revenue, Net Income, Total Assets, Net Assets, Employees
Value — P/E, P/B, PEG, P/S, FCF Yield, EV/EBITDA
Profitability — ROE, Operating Margin, Revenue Growth
Financial Health — Debt Ratio, Total Debt, FCF, Cash on Hand, Current Ratio, Net Debt/EBITDA
Dividend — Dividend Yield, Dividend Growth
Performance — 1D Return, 30D Return, 1Y Return, % from 52W High, MDD
Trading — Volume, Trading Value

No clutter. If I need to add one more someday, I'll remove one.

Composite Ranking — the feature I use every day

This solves the problem I had most often.

Say you want a company that's high quality, undervalued, and growing:

ROE — capital efficiency (higher = quality)
P/E — valuation (lower = undervalued)
Revenue Growth — momentum (higher = growing)

On most sites, you'd look at each metric separately and mentally combine them. Here, select all three chips and the table ranks by their combined score. One click.

Range filter — with the distribution shown

Most range filters are just a min/max box. Mine shows a distribution histogram next to the slider.

When you set P/E between 10 and 20, you immediately see where that sits in the market — what the median is, where the outliers are, how wide or narrow your filter really is. Filtering stops being a guess and becomes a positional decision.

Stock comparison — the workflow I actually think in

After filtering, you narrow to 2–5 candidates and compare them side by side. The best value for each metric is highlighted.

Cumulative Return Chart — all stocks aligned to a 0% baseline. NVIDIA vs Apple vs Microsoft over the last year — the gap is immediately clear. Relative return, not absolute price, so very different price levels still compare fairly.

Macro Overlay — overlay a stock's price with S&P 500, NASDAQ, USD/KRW, US Fed rate, or Korea base rate. How did this stock respond when rates went up? How does it track the index? One chart, answers there.

All charts support drag-to-zoom and pan, with a fullscreen mode on mobile.

Financial history — 10 years, one chart

A single quarter's numbers can mislead. A company that looks strong this quarter can tell a very different story when you look at ten years of trend.

The stock detail page shows up to 10 years of annual financials as a bar chart.

Revenue, operating income, net income, EBITDA, FCF, total assets, equity, total debt — 16 metrics, each switchable in one click. Toggle between 5Y and 10Y.

A company with seven straight years of flat revenue but rising debt is a different story from one with steady cash flow growth — even if this quarter's EPS looks similar. The bar chart makes that obvious.

On the comparison page, this same timeline works across multiple stocks simultaneously — compare NVIDIA vs Apple vs Microsoft revenue side by side, not just price.

What we deliberately don't do

❌ No price targets — no "this stock should be worth $X"
❌ No buy/sell calls — no "strong buy" or "hold today"
❌ No data-blocking ads — the data stays visible
❌ No subscription — all features free

The market has too many opinions. What investors actually lack is accurate data to verify them. StockDigging focuses on the latter.

Who it's for

Anyone tired of cluttered financial sites
Investors who want to screen by multiple criteria at once
People who'd rather judge from data than from headlines

Bonus: also covers 2,400+ Korean stocks (KOSPI/KOSDAQ) with data pulled directly from DART — Korea's official corporate disclosure system.

Try it

Free. No signup needed for most features.

👉 stockdigging.com/en

If you have feedback or a metric you'd like added — I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Tags: #webdev #python #react #typescript #database #opensource #javascript

Built this because Korean stock data on global platforms is unreliable. 2,400+ KOSPI/KOSDAQ stocks, DART-sourced. Free.

Kiwon Song — Fri, 01 May 2026 10:55:30 +0000

Kiwon Song

May 1

I Built a Stock Screener Because I Was Tired of Fighting My Own Tools

#webdev #python #react #javascript

Comments

6 min read