Micron Soars 16%, Sandisk 21% as Memory Stocks Rally
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- Micron Technology (MU) surged 15.81% to close at $1,213.56 after reporting quarterly results that Capital.com analyst Daniela Hathorn said 'justify elevated valuations' across the memory complex.
- Sandisk (SNDK) soared 21% and Western Digital (WDC) climbed 4%, leading a broad rally in memory and storage names that Hathorn attributed to investors 'willing to look through short-term volatility.'
- The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) gained more than 3%, with Qualcomm (QCOM) and Applied Materials (AMAT) also rising as the earnings beat lifted sentiment across the chip sector.
- Nvidia (NVDA) slipped 1.59% after Qualcomm forecast $15 billion in new data-center revenue as it broadens beyond smartphones, putting it in direct competition with Nvidia's AI chip dominance.
- The source notes memory has been 'a major bottleneck in the artificial intelligence trade,' framing Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix — all of which hit $1 trillion valuations last month — as supply-constrained enablers rather than passive beneficiaries of AI spending.
- The broader tech sector (XLK) is up 27% year-to-date and 43% since March 30 lows, with semiconductors driving the gains.
Why it matters: The rally shows leadership in the AI trade rotating from compute to memory: Micron, Sandisk and Western Digital delivered outsized gains while Nvidia dipped on Qualcomm's $15 billion data-center forecast, suggesting investors are rewarding companies that solve supply bottlenecks rather than just AI compute demand.
