MU, SNDK, WDC: Memory Stocks Rally Overnight, Micron Eyes $1T Club

• Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital shares jumped in overnight trading heading into Monday.
• MU stock surged 38% last week, its best weekly gains since December 2008.
• Micron announced that it had begun shipping its 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD, the world's highest-capacity commercially available data center SSD.

Memory chip stocks surged overnight heading into Monday, signaling renewed momentum in a sector that has continued to captivate investors, with retail traders increasingly betting Micron could eventually reach a $1 trillion market capitalization.

Micron stock was up 4%, while SanDisk shares gained 2% and Western Digital Corp. shares gained 1%. 

Micron rallied 38% last week, its best week since December 2008, and was the second-highest gainer in the Nasdaq-100 index. In recent weeks, upbeat quarterly reports from chip giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, along with hyperscalers Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, have reinforced that AI demand and data center buildouts remain on a sharp upward trajectory — a trend that bodes well for the memory chip sector.

SanDisk gained 32%, and Western Digital rose 11% last week. The companies reported upbeat reports on April 30 and May 1, respectively; the stocks initially fell before rising sharply in the coming days. The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), which tracks memory stocks including those of overseas giants like SK Hynix and Samsung, rose 30%, its best week since the fund was launched on April 2.
 

Last week, Micron announced that it had begun shipping its 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD, the world's highest-capacity commercially available data center SSD. Targeted at AI, cloud, hyperscale, and enterprise workloads, it delivers major efficiency gains, requiring roughly 82% fewer racks and far less physical space and power than HDD-based alternatives.

Retail Backs Memory Upcycle

Despite the sharp gains, traders believe the momentum in these stocks is still in its early stages. 

“From 2013-2015, Micron was actually worth significantly more than Nvidia, but that was before Nvidia got into the data center business. As AI workloads become more memory and CPU intensive ($INTC $AMD), this ratio can easily get back to ~40% again where it was for so many years. There's a reason $MU and $SNDK have been bought up like crazy on even the slightest of dips all year long,” posted a trader on Stocktwits.

Another wrote that memory stocks are “not even close to being overvalued with this new paradigm shift in non cyclical memory demand” and forecast Micron to soon reach $1,000, or 34% higher from its last close.

“Micron $MU needs to hit approximately $886 to join the Trillion market cap club. It will be a monumental moment for the memory bulls after being called crazy for the past 10 months,” a trader said.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment was ‘extremely bullish’ for MU, SNDK and DRAM, and ‘bullish’ for WDC. Analysts on the other hand expect the stock prices to cool; on an average, they have a $556.05 price target on Micron (27% downside), $1,399 for SanDisk (10% downside) and $495.68 for Western Digital (3% upside)

Micron has been capturing a larger share of retail trading overall over the past few months, according to a CNBC report. Net buying picked up to its highest level in two years in mid-April, CNBC reported, quoting Vanda Research.

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