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Bernstein’s Mark Li Raised His Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) Target to $600. Here’s What Changed

Via Insider Monkey

Bernstein’s Mark Li Raised His Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) Target to $600. Here’s What Changed Farooq Thu, November 12, 2026 at 6:11 PM EST 4 min read ^GSPC -0.35% TSM -1.22% ^DJI -0.36% ^IXIC -0.39% TSM -1.22% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.

We just published a list of the 10 Best Growth Stocks for the Next 5 Years and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) ranked 6th on this list.

Technology stocks went from celebration to rout within two sessions this month. On Wednesday, November 4, equities rallied after Democrats swept Congress in the midterm elections. By Thursday, the S&P 500 had fallen 4.36% and the Dow had lost 3.44%, while the Nasdaq Composite closed 5.52% lower, its worst day since April 2025. The drop pushed the tech-heavy index into correction territory, at least 10% below its October 6 record close.

The selling did not stop there, and the S&P 500 went on to post its worst week since June. Truist chief markets strategist Keith Lerner called the action "something of a buyers' strike" in technology. Breadth was thin, with only about one in seven S&P 500 stocks rising on the day of the steepest decline.

The election result mattered for reasons that go beyond party control. eToro market analyst Jakub Rochlitz said rising electricity prices turned data-center construction into a political issue during the campaign. In his view, markets now assume that the artificial intelligence buildout will be slower and more expensive, which rewrites growth expectations for every company along the supply chain.

The damage was sharpest in semiconductors. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 12% and the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.4%, the biggest one-day declines for both gauges since March 2020. Readers following the group can find more names in our list of the most promising technology stocks to buy right now.

Anxiety about AI spending had been building well before the vote. Bloomberg reported that interest rates were climbing, borrowing to fund the buildout was growing, and public backlash against data centers was spreading. Investors are now demanding higher yields from heavily indebted data-center builders, which raises the cost of every new project.

The numbers show how quickly sentiment turned. An October 30 sell-off erased more than $1 trillion of tech market value, and chipmakers surrendered more than $1.5 trillion on November 5 alone. Analyst-driven picks from the same corner of the market are collected in our list of the best aggressive growth stocks to buy according to Wall Street analysts.

Not everyone read the move as a break in the trend. Argent Capital Management portfolio manager Jed Ellerbroek told Reuters that the selling felt like capitulation among the beneficiaries of data-center spending, though the size of the move looked outsized to him. His comment shows that even investors who saw capitulation in data-center names questioned the scale of the decline.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing made it to our list because it has a five-year EPS growth rate of 25.67% and an average upside potential of 33%.

Bernstein analyst Mark Li lifted his price target on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to $600 from $554 on November 4 and kept an Outperform rating. His reasoning was that demand from Amazon's and Google's in-house custom chips is arriving faster than expected, which pulls more of the AI market toward the contract chipmaker's most advanced factories. He applied a forward earnings multiple to estimates running from late 2027 into 2028, so the call is a bet on durability.

Results show where that demand is landing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing builds chips designed by other companies, and high-performance computing made up 68% of its third-quarter net revenue, while October revenue jumped 59.7% from a year earlier. Investors like that the mix is tilting toward leading-edge nodes, which carry the highest prices. The company spent US$13.84 billion on capital expenditures in the quarter to build capacity for those chips.

For more on the cost side of that story, see our look at TSMC's record AI demand and its growing cost. Whether 2-nanometer production, which is already contributing to wafer revenue, can extend the pace into 2027 is the next question for investors.

While we acknowledge the risk and potential of TSM as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

READ NEXT: Micron (MU) Looks Cheap at 5 Times Forward Earnings. Can Its Profit Boom Last? and Nvidia (NVDA) Is Trading Like Growth Will Stop. The Numbers Say Otherwise.

Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.

Read original at Yahoo Finance News

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