Well no, not really. Fuel (or really, oil) is a single commodity that everybody is after. If the price is low, and you're anticipating a shortage in the near f

Well no, not really. Fuel (or really, oil) is a single commodity that everybody is after. If the price is low, and you're anticipating a shortage in the near future, you can buy now and sell later for a higher price. That's as simple as a market can get. buy low, sell high, whilst gambling on future price rises. However, ICs are not a single commodity - you can't take whatever the foundry is putting out and slam it in place of whatever you actually needed. Each circuit is specific to its application. Sure, you could take a similar chip and rework your product to use the new chip instead of the old, but that isn't how a foundry works. They sell capacity. Each company that wants their chips made will (or should) have done their forecasting for demand in the short-medium term. The problem is that those term limits have lapsed at a time when manufacturing is in a crunch. So now everybody needs new chips made, and nobody has the capacity to make them all. Those that can rework their products to use similar chips that are already available should be doing so to maintain business. Those that can't do that, or are unwilling to do that, are paying through the nose to pay off other foundry customers to take their slots. meanwhile, there aren't enough chips to continue product manufacturing, so that's on hold until the new chips come out of the foundry and then everything can resume. Prices will rise to cover the lull in production. And then businesses will see that people are willing to pay that amount, and so prices will not go back down. If that isn't a more complicated financial market than oil, then I have no idea what is.