**Overall trend: growing, with a clear upward drift since 2012.** Growth is uneven, and the evidence here does not show seasonality. The yearly figures come from the gold table `semi_conductor_se_by_date__yyyy`. - **Price level (median close):** This is the most reliable gauge. - It rises from about 13.4 in 2012 to 16.6 (2013), 32.1 (2017), 46.2 (2020), 68.4 (2021) and 69.7 (2024). - 2025 is a partial year (through early August) at about 63.8. - That is roughly a 5x rise over the period. - The dip in 2022 (57.2) and the partial-year softness in 2025 are pauses, not reversals. - The AI-era step-up shows mainly in 2017 and 2021 rather than as a single jump. - **Average price:** I would not lean on this. The average close climbs from about 485 to about 3,640 in 2024, but the maximum close reaches about 240,000–300,000. That suggests some tickers trade in high-denomination local currencies or have very high share prices, which inflates the mean. The median is the better guide to the typical stock. - **Coverage:** Rows per year grow from 26,016 (2012) to 37,847 (2024). More stocks or trading days are tracked over time, so raw row counts and total volume are partly a coverage effect. - **Trading activity:** - Total volume is flat to cyclical at roughly 170–330 billion shares a year, peaking in 2017 and 2020 and with no sustained growth. - Median daily volume per stock-day does rise steadily, from about 563k (2012) to 1.11M (2023), 1.42M (2024) and 1.76M (2025 to date). Typical stocks are trading more, while the heavily traded names have cooled. - **Seasonality:** I only looked at yearly aggregates, so I can't say whether there is a within-year pattern. The yearly view shows a multi-year growth trend with occasional drawdowns (2015–2016, 2018–2019, 2022), not a regular seasonal cycle. Testing seasonality would need the monthly gold table. ```json {"charts":[{"kind":"line","x":"date__yyyy","series":["close__median"],"title":"Median close price by year"}]} ``` {"action":"final","content":"**Overall trend: growing, with a clear upward drift since 2012.** Growth is uneven, and the evidence here does not show seasonality.\n\nThe yearly figures come from the gold table `semi_conductor_se_by_date__yyyy`.\n\n- **Price level (median close):** This is the most reliable gauge.\n - It rises from about 13.4 in 2012 to 16.6 (2013), 32.1 (2017), 46.2 (2020), 68.4 (2021) and 69.7 (2024).\n - 2025 is a partial year (through early August) at about 63.8.\n - That is roughly a 5x rise over the period.\n - The dip in 2022 (57.2) and the partial-year softness in 2025 are pauses, not reversals.\n - The AI-era step-up shows mainly in 2017 and 2021 rather than as a single jump.\n- **Average price:** I would not lean on this. The average close climbs from about 485 to about 3,640 in 2024, but the maximum close reaches about 240,000–300,000. That suggests some tickers trade in high-denomination local currencies or have very high share prices, which inflates the mean. The median is the better guide to the typical stock.\n- **Coverage:** Rows per year grow from 26,016 (2012) to 37,847 (2024). More stocks or trading days are tracked over time, so raw row counts and total volume are partly a coverage effect.\n- **Trading activity:**\n - Total volume is flat to cyclical at roughly 170–330 billion shares a year, peaking in 2017 and 2020 and with no sustained growth.\n - Median daily volume per stock-day does rise steadily, from about 563k (2012) to 1.11M (2023), 1.42M (2024) and 1.76M (2025 to date). Typical stocks are trading more, while the heavily traded names have cooled.\n- **Seasonality:** I only looked at yearly aggregates, so I can't say whether there is a within-year pattern. The yearly view shows a multi-year growth trend with occasional drawdowns (2015–2016, 2018–2019, 2022), not a regular seasonal cycle. Testing seasonality would need the monthly gold table.","charts":[{"kind":"line","x":"date__yyyy","series":["close__median"],"title":"Median close price by year"}]}