Operating rules
Index Pulse has three jobs: compare the major index ETFs with investable expressions of the AI stack, show the winners and losers inside each index and fund, and keep the thesis behind each category explicit, sourced, and falsifiable.
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VOO, QQQ, MAGS (a Magnificent Seven proxy), SMH, SOXX, AIS, DRAM, DISK, NCLD, and LYTE are measured as exchange-traded funds. Adjusted close is preferred when the provider supplies it, with raw close as the explicit fallback. Fund fees remain embedded in observed performance.
fund return = ending adjusted close ÷ starting adjusted close − 1
The AI funds span broad semiconductors, cross-stack AI exposure, and memory; VOO, QQQ, and MAGS are the broad-market and mega-cap baselines they must beat. Their mandates overlap and their inclusion is not an allocation recommendation. Each mandate, inception date, fund size, and expense ratio links to its sponsor.
Fund size is the sponsor-reported AUM or net assets on the labeled as-of date. Expense ratio is the sponsor’s current published total or gross ratio. These source-backed facts are stored separately from price history and are not inferred by the market-data provider.
1D is today’s session against the prior close: while the U.S. market is open (9:30 AM–4:00 PM ET) it uses the latest delayed trade and refreshes about every minute, and outside the session it is the latest completed session against the one before it. Non-U.S. holdings use their own exchange’s latest session against its prior close. While the market is open the longer windows are live too: each window’s start is measured from today’s session date (so “1M” starts at the last close on or before one month before today, not before the last close), and the live return is the latest trade divided by that start price. Because ETF returns are total returns, the start price is converted to today’s price terms with the adjusted-close ratio, start × (last raw close ÷ last adjusted close), so the live figure equals today’s price move chained onto the total return through the last close; a dividend that goes ex today is reflected after the next daily build. 1W, 1M, 3M, 1Y, and 3Y start at the last trading close on or before the same calendar date in the past, the convention most public quote pages use. YTD starts at the prior year-end close; since inception starts with the first close on or after the current fund’s inception date (SMH’s ticker also carries quotes from its pre-2011 HOLDRS predecessor, which are excluded). A window longer than a fund’s life (for example 3M, YTD, or 1Y for NCLD and LYTE, which first traded Aug 6, 2026) is shown as unavailable rather than computed from a partial history.
The ChatGPT window begins on the first trading session on or after November 30, 2022, the official launch date. OpenAI source ↗
VOO represents broad U.S. equities; QQQ represents the Nasdaq-100 growth cohort. Both compound over the fund’s exact comparison window. If a benchmark did not yet exist, that relative window is omitted rather than backfilled.
relative return = (1 + fund return) ÷ (1 + benchmark return) − 1
02 · Data
Prices come from Yahoo Finance’s free, keyless chart and batch-history endpoints: full daily history for each ETF and two years of daily closes for holdings, sector exposures, and index constituents. The site runs on the Cloudflare Workers Free plan, so the page is computed once when it is deployed and served as a static snapshot. Live prices during the U.S. session are the one exception (see How often the data updates). The “as of” stamp shows the last market close captured and when the snapshot was built, in U.S. Central time. Missing symbols stay visibly unavailable. All return arithmetic is deterministic code.
Yahoo Finance chart data ↗03 · Research
Power
Capacity additions, standardization, or project delays remove the scarcity premium faster than demand grows.
Suppliers
Foundry and memory capital intensity falls structurally or tool reuse materially lengthens replacement cycles.
Packaging
Capacity catches demand, yields normalize rapidly, or architectures reduce packaging intensity.
Semis
Order concentration, inventory, or capacity additions turn the basket into a lower-quality proxy for AI demand.
Memory
HBM commoditizes quickly, conventional memory weakens, or aggressive capacity recreates a severe downcycle.
GPU
Utilization falls, alternatives erase platform advantages, or efficiency gains sharply reduce required accelerator units.
CPU
Accelerator integration or custom silicon compresses host CPU content and economics faster than cluster volumes grow.
Network
Standardization, integration, or slower cluster growth commoditizes switching and optics faster than volumes expand.
Neoclouds
Customer concentration, refinancing needs, or falling compute prices expose weak unit economics or stranded capacity.
Lab proxies
Governance, dilution, capital commitments, or a weak commercial link make the public security a poor proxy for frontier-model value.
Working five-layer map
04 · Governance