Custer Momentum: Four Tiers Green, One Gap at a 105-Quarter High

The 213-company electronic equipment composite grew 16.8 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Computer and peripheral suppliers accounted for 62 percent of the increase, adding 91.3 billion dollars of the 146.9 billion total.

The rest of the composite grew 8.9 percent. All six non-computing sectors came in above their own median for the seventeen quarters since the Q4 2020 sector redefinition, the only quarter in that record where that holds. Automotive posted its strongest reading since the fourth quarter of 2023, after seven of the previous nine quarters were negative.

Growth of that breadth follows two years in which the non-computing composite did not move. It stood at 626.7 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2023 and 626.1 billion in the first quarter of 2025, and compounds at 2.8 percent over three years. One quarter does not establish a trend.

All four supplier tiers are growing and each is accelerating: semiconductor suppliers at a 3/12 of 1.56, PCB fabricators 1.32, electronic materials 1.16, PCB process equipment 1.14. Semiconductor suppliers and PCB fabricators both set revenue records, at 158.8 billion and 6.68 billion dollars. Ninety-seven percent of the semiconductor composite’s four-year gain came in the last twelve months.

Measured against each other, the two composites are further apart than at any point since 2000. Semiconductor revenue per dollar of board revenue reached 23.76x, the highest of 105 quarters.

Datacom and networking inventory closed the fourth quarter of 2025 at 37.6 percent of quarterly revenue, against a 31.0 percent average for the prior twenty quarters. Across 100 quarters that divergence has been a weak negative indicator, and the current reading ranks sixteenth. It is a balance-sheet position rather than a demand signal.

The full report is attached: CCG_Custer_Momentum_Q1_2026_3

The four Custer Momentum charts, the sector contribution detail, and the composite construction notes, including where each series changes source and how those seams were tested.