Western Digital Corporation (WDC) news and analysis
Kioxia plans a $6.3 billion new memory plant in Japan, Nikkei reports
Nikkei says Kioxia plans to invest about $6.3 billion in a new memory plant in Japan for AI data-center demand. There is no US Kioxia ticker; Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital and Micron are the proxies.
Memory chip prices are soaring. So why are Micron (MU), SanDisk (SNDK) and SK Hynix (SKHY) falling?
Korea's chip exports nearly tripled in the first 20 days of August and its semiconductor export price index has quadrupled since 2023. Micron, SanDisk, SK Hynix, Samsung and Kioxia all peaked within one week in June and have fallen 21% to 51% since.
Memory is the bottleneck for AI, and the shortage is real
Elon Musk amplified a post calling memory, not compute, the limit for AI, and memory stocks ran. The shortage is real: demand is growing far faster than supply, and the new SK Hynix and Micron plants do not open until 2027 and 2028.
The AI trade rallied Monday. Memory fell as much as 8% at the open even as chip prices kept rising.
Micron (MU) has lost a third of its value since June 25 and SanDisk nearly half. CoreWeave and Vertiv fell about half as far, and Nvidia rose. Memory contract prices never fell. What changed is the rate of increase, which went from 93-98% a quarter to a forecast 13-18%.
SanDisk (SNDK) beat every line and guided way above consensus. The stock fell anyway.
SanDisk (SNDK) reports fiscal Q4 on August 5 with Goldman's target at $2,200 and the stock at $1,214.87 after a 5.1% Friday drop. SK Hynix printed a 76% operating margin on July 29 and Seoul still closed down 9.61%, because revenue missed consensus by 5.5%.
You cannot buy China's CXMT in the US. You can buy the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), which has $627 million riding on it.
The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) added a $627.5 million CXMT total return swap at a 2.52% weight, five days after CXMT's Shanghai listing. The position is bigger than GigaDevice, and there was no CXMT line in the fund's July 23 file.
Kioxia hit limit-down again and is down 60% from its June peak. Sandisk (SNDK) co-owns its factories (July 28, 2026)
Kioxia closed at its limit-down price of 44,550 yen ($272 USD), down 18.33%, after finishing at the bottom of its daily band on July 17 as well. It is 60.5% below the 112,700 yen peak it set on June 22. It shares the Yokkaichi and Kitakami NAND plants with Sandisk (SNDK), which is why the two keep falling together.
Citadel says the Fed hikes Wednesday. All 104 economists Reuters asked say it won't (MU, NVDA, July 28, 2026)
I was sure Citadel's rate call knocked the Nasdaq down 2% Tuesday morning. Nvidia (NVDA) was green while Micron (MU) fell 7.69% and the 2-year yield never moved, so it was not the Fed at all. It was Seoul. Here is the split that actually matters at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Korea's Kospi fell 10.84% and halted trading. Nvidia (NVDA) is flat and Micron (MU) is down 10% (July 28, 2026)
Korea's Kospi closed at 6,023.66 on Tuesday, down 10.84%, its fourth largest one-day fall on record, after Korea Exchange stopped all trading for 20 minutes. Samsung and SK Hynix each lost more than 13%. The US carryover went into memory and storage, with Sandisk (SNDK) down 14.52% and Micron (MU) down 9.54%, while Nvidia (NVDA) held flat and the Dow rose.
ChangXin Memory (CXMT) closed up 466% on day one and is worth as much as Intel. Its factories are sold out through 2027.
ChangXin Memory (CXMT) closed its Shanghai debut up 465.82%, passing ICBC as China's most valuable listed company and drawing level with Intel. Only 6.73% of its stock was tradable. The order book behind it is the part that matters for Micron (MU) and SK Hynix (SKHY).
Memory stocks fell hard this week, from Micron (MU) to Western Digital (WDC). Sandisk (SNDK) lost 29%, and Goldman's price target says it should be 60% higher.
Sandisk (SNDK) fell 29% this week, the worst of a brutal stretch for memory stocks that also hit Micron (MU) and Western Digital (WDC). Two weeks ago Goldman Sachs raised its SNDK target to $2,200, more than 60% above Friday's close. Earnings on August 5 start settling the argument.
SK Hynix (SKHY) and Samsung make almost 80% of the world's AI memory. That's why Micron (MU) and US chip stocks crashed again (July 16, 2026)
Chip stocks fell hard again on July 16: SK Hynix's US shares (SKHY) closed down 13.7%, SanDisk (SNDK) 12.6%, Western Digital (WDC) 9.2%, Micron (MU) 5.7%, even after TSMC's record quarter. The reason traces back to Korea, where Samsung and SK Hynix make close to 80% of the world's AI memory, and to China's CXMT pricing an $85.7 billion IPO the same day.
TSMC beat earnings for a seventh straight quarter. The whole chip sector sold off anyway, and health care picked up the money.
TSMC beat Q2 earnings for a seventh straight quarter and raised its own 2026 capex forecast, an unusually bullish print. The semiconductor sector sold off anyway, continuing this week's memory-chip unwind, while health care, led by big earnings beats from UnitedHealth and Abbott, picked up the money instead.
SpaceX briefly fell below its IPO price today, and the revenue never supported a $2 trillion valuation
SpaceX dipped as low as around $132 on Wednesday, briefly trading below its $135 IPO price for the first time, before closing at $135.27, just pennies above it. With about $18.7 billion in revenue last year, a $2 trillion valuation was always a stretch, and Morningstar said as much before the IPO even priced.
Money is rotating out of semiconductor stocks and into the Mag 7 today. (July 15, 2026)
The real move Wednesday is money rotating into the Mag 7, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are each up more than 3%. That money is coming out of semiconductor stocks, as SK Hynix's Nasdaq ADR, Micron and SanDisk all give back this week's spike.
We built a stock score tool. It gave Intel a D, and I bought the stock anyway.
One pick in every layer of the AI hardware stack, each one graded by the SEC-filings scoring tool we just built. Four picks agree with the tool: NVDA, WDC, TSM, VRT. Micron is a partial. INTC and COHR do not agree with the tool at all, and I am holding both anyway.
Inside the AI hardware stack, from Nvidia's chips to the grid that powers them
An AI data center is seven layers of hardware: GPUs, memory, storage, CPUs, networking, manufacturing, and power. Here's the full map, with the public companies behind each layer and where the bottlenecks actually are.
Chip stocks just had their best day in weeks. Meta and Amazon are both betting billions that AI compute demand isn't topping out (MU, WDC, META)
Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital are having their best day in weeks. A week after a rumor said Meta had too much AI compute, Meta and Amazon both bet billions that demand is still growing, and Samsung's own record quarter couldn't shake investors until this week's data center news did.
Wall Street used to move the Kospi. This week, the Kospi moved Wall Street.
South Korea's Kospi tumbled into a bear market this week. Its relationship with Wall Street isn't a one-way street. It runs both directions, depending on where the shock starts.
Samsung's record beat couldn't stop a memory stock selloff, and Micron (MU) is caught in it
Samsung posted a record 89.4 trillion won ($58.5 billion) Q2 operating profit, up 18-fold year over year, and the stock still opened lower. Memory names like Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital are down sharply while the broader Nasdaq 100 barely moved. This is still developing after-hours and can change fast.
What is HBM? The memory chips powering the AI boom
Only three companies make high bandwidth memory, the chips every AI accelerator depends on, and supply is sold out through 2026. What HBM is, who makes it, and how to invest in it.
Astera Labs (ALAB) rallies again, and Wall Street's targets can't keep up
ALAB surged again as chip stocks rallied broadly on July 6, extending a two-week run built on a Q1 beat and Nasdaq-100 inclusion. Even Bank of America's Street-high $450 target, set nearly two weeks ago, can't keep pace with the stock.
Hyperliquid's Sunday tape shows chip and memory stocks bouncing hard
Western Digital, SanDisk and Micron are all up more than 6% from Thursday's close on Hyperliquid's 24/7 stock perpetuals. Here is the Sunday snapshot, and why it is not the same as Sunday night's real reopen.
Micron (MU), Nebius (NBIS) and chip stocks jump on Hyperliquid's weekend tape
Real markets are closed for July 4th, but tech and chip stocks are trading green right now on Hyperliquid's 24/7 stock perpetuals. Micron, Marvell and Nebius lead the bounce, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq perpetuals are up too. Here is the full read, and why Monday could look nothing like this.