1 Green Flag and 1 Red Flag for TSMC's Future

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM), the world's largest contract chipmaker, has been a divisive investment over the past year. The bears argued that cooling sales of PCs in a post-pandemic market, supply chain challenges for smartphones, and other macro headwinds would throttle the growth of the semiconductor sector and curb the market's demand for its services. The bulls pointed out that TSMC has weathered plenty of cyclical downturns before, and that it would likely remain far ahead of its closest rivals -- Samsung and Intel -- in the "process race" to manufacture smaller and denser chips.