Oil Crashed and the TACO Trade Worked—So Why Did Memory Stocks Get Destroyed?
Monday’s market looked completely contradictory. The United States paused its strikes on Iran, Brent crude briefly fell below $88, and oil dropped more than 8% in a single session. Normally, falling oil prices should ease inflation fears and support growth stocks. Instead, AI hardware was crushed. $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ closed down about 11% after falling more than 13% intraday. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ lost roughly 5%, while $Western Digital(WDC)$ and $Seagate Technology(STX)$ declined around 4%. $Micron Technology(MU)$ was down more than 7% at
Google earnings to test if the memory stock rebound can turn into a reversal
Today, global memory stocks finally staged a meaningful rebound. It felt like weeks of pent-up pressure were finally released. South Korea’s KOSPI rose roughly 3.6%, while Japan’s Nikkei gained about 3.3%. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Kioxia $KIOXIA HLDGS CORP(KXIAY)$ all rallied. Japan was closed yesterday, and Kioxia came back today with a 17% surge—nearly brought me to tears.[Cool][Smart][Sly] In U.S. premarket trading, SNDK, MU, WDC, and STX were also all higher. Asia-Pacific market performance There was also a fundamental catalyst today: South Korea’s exports during the first 20 days of July rose 52.3% year over year, with semiconductor exports surging 180.6%. At the very least, this confirms that memory shipments have
Is the Momentum Unwind in Memory Stocks Finally Over?
Hi everyone. Today I want to share a special analysis of the memory sector. Let me start with the conclusion: the most violent phase of forced deleveraging may be close to ending, but that does not mean the correction is over. Memory fundamentals remain strong, while price action and positioning have yet to confirm a genuine reversal. 1. Fundamentals: The thesis remains intact, but expectations got too far ahead The latest rally began after SanDisk’s earnings-driven rerating in late April. Kioxia, SK hynix, Micron and SanDisk all moved sharply higher. Fundamentals started the rally, but Momentum-driven capital eventually took over. This was not a purely speculative move. $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$ reported quarterly revenue of $5.95 bil
Why AAOI Plunged After Announcing a Capacity Expansion: One Piece of Good News Exposed the Market’s Biggest Concern The optical communications sector also suffered a sharp sell-off today. As of around 2:45 p.m. Eastern Time, $Applied Optoelectronics(AAOI)$ was down approximately 12.2%, $Lumentum(LITE)$ had fallen around 7.7%, and $Coherent(COHR)$was down roughly 5.3%. AAOI’s decline was significantly steeper than those of other major optical communications companies. The most obvious explanation was the company’s newly released announcement regarding the expansion of its Pearland facilities. AAOI announced that it h
Following up on my previous article about my outlook for the memory sector in July: Fourth: Being Bullish on SK Hynix Does Not Mean You Should Hold 7709 Indefinitely [You may be able to wait with [$SK Hynix (SKHY)$](https://ttm.financial/S/SKHY) shares—but [$CSOP SK Hynix 2x Long (07709)$](https://ttm.financial/S/07709) may never make it back to its previous high.] This is one of the issues investors most commonly misunderstand. Being bullish on a company and choosing the right instrument to invest in it are two entirely different things. If you own SK Hynix shares, then as long as the company’s profitability and competitive position have not been permanently damaged, you can theoretically wait for the next upcycle. Leveraged products such as 7709 are different. They are subject to daily r
To be honest, back between April and June, so many people wanted to say one thing: "Buffett, you're getting old! This new era belongs to the youth, to tech, and to AI! Your investment style is outdated!!" But now that it's July, everyone is finally realizing that Buffett is still the true Oracle. I guess people are finally understanding what he meant by "the most important thing is to stay alive." There is a saying that I think hits the nail on the head: "Buy when there is panic; sell when there is hysteria." I hope everyone can reflect on this and take it to heart.
Memory Stocks Are Not Broken—This Is a Painful Leverage Unwind
Before discussing anything else, let me start with a simple question about the memory sector. From their recent highs to where they are now, stocks such as [$SK hynix (SKHY)$](https://ttm.financial/S/SKHY) and [$SanDisk (SNDK)$](https://ttm.financial/S/SNDK) have fallen sharply in less than two weeks. Have HBM orders declined during this period? Have NAND flash and DRAM prices fallen? Clearly, the answer is no. This suggests that the fundamentals have not changed. What we are seeing is simply a short-term leverage unwind. Below is my detailed analysis and personal view based on the available data. First: SK hynix’s fundamentals have not been disproven, but the short-term bottom has not been confirmed SK hynix’s Korean-listed shares plunged by more than 15% at one point today. The KOSPI fel
Market Structure View on $SKHY The key point is simple: A 7x oversubscribed book proves that the primary market wants allocation. It does not prove that the secondary market has to keep bidding the stock higher. The real issue here is that the primary market and the secondary market are trading two completely different things. SK Hynix’s U.S. listing is huge. The basic facts are clear: 17.79 million new common shares. 177.9 million ADSs. 10 ADSs represent 1 common share. Demand reportedly exceeded available supply by more than 7x. Large U.S. institutional orders started around $200 million. Baillie Gifford, Coatue, Situational Awareness and other major funds have shown interest. That demand is real. But primary demand and secondary price action are not the same thing. The primary market is
2026 First-Half Review: Pain and Reward, and Why Holding Matters Most
If I had to summarize my first half of 2026 in one sentence, I would say: It was a first half filled with both pain and reward. The reward was that I saw the opportunity in the memory sector early. The pain was that I got the direction right, but I did not truly hold on. The best decision I made in the first half of the year was starting to build a position in the memory sector in January, mainly through Micron. My thinking at the time was simple: As HBM prices continued to rise, DRAM and NAND were also entering a new pricing upcycle. The memory industry was likely moving back into a strong cycle. Historically, memory has always been a classic cyclical industry. Every few years, it enters a powerful upcycle. But this time is different. This cycle is not only driven by a normal supply-deman
The GPU Trade Is Not Over, But the Next AI Capex Wave May Move Into Networks
AI infrastructure is entering a new phase. In the first phase, the market was trading one question: Who has the most GPUs? Then the focus shifted to data centers. Who can secure enough power, land, cooling, servers, and deployment capacity? But now, the question is changing again. As AI Mega Clusters move from hundreds of thousands of GPUs toward millions of GPUs, the bottleneck is no longer just GPUs. It is no longer just power. The next bottleneck is whether multiple data centers can be connected into one unified AI training cluster. That is Scale-Across. SemiAnalysis recently published a deep dive on this topic. Their core view is clear: future AI clusters cannot rely forever on the expansion of a single campus. More cloud providers will have to connect multiple data centers, multiple c