Micron Tech and Sandisk Lead Surge as Storage Sector Drives US Stock Rebound

Tech momentum stocks made a strong return, with the memory and data storage sector leading the market on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, April 1st, the US stock market rose for the second consecutive trading day, with tech stocks supporting the Nasdaq in rising more than 1%. Within this, the storage stock sector recorded a single-day percentage gain of 8%, marking the second-largest single-day percentage gain in the index's history.

On an individual stock basis, Micron Tech's stock price surged by nearly 9%, while Sandisk rose by over 9%; data storage giants Western Digital and Seagate Tech rose by 10% and 8%, respectively.

This wave of market activity reflects a clear shift in investor sentiment. As the second quarter just opened, market capital flowed back from the previously defensive energy sector into tech momentum stocks.

Momentum Stocks Return in Force, Reversing March Slump

In March, investors sold off tech stocks heavily due to tensions surrounding the war in Iran, shifting toward defensive sectors like energy, with memory and storage stocks being the first to be hit.

Analysis suggests that this week's capital inflow indicates a clear repair in market risk appetite as the second quarter begins.

On Wednesday, the Invesco S&P 500 Pure Growth ETF rose 3.2%. Among its current holdings, Sandisk and Micron Tech both rank within the top ten largest positions. Additionally, the Goldman Sachs Momentum Index has also surged for two consecutive days.

(The Goldman Sachs Momentum Index has surged for two consecutive days)

Micron Tech, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Tech are typical representatives of the momentum investment style.

Last year, all four were among the S&P 500 components with the largest percentage gains, each achieving triple-digit percentage gains. The core driver was the surge in demand for memory chips and data storage driven by the AI wave.

This fundamental background provides basic support for this rebound. Under the expectation of continued expansion in AI-related capital expenditure, the long-term demand logic for the memory and storage sector remains intact, allowing the aforementioned stocks to be the first to benefit as market sentiment recovers.

Server Demand is the Real Engine Supporting Storage Fundamentals

Previously, concerns over a sharp decline in memory usage triggered by Google's latest TurboQuant compression algorithm, combined with concentrated selling by funds that had previously hoarded inventory, led to a nearly 30% plunge in DDR5 memory module quotes in US and Chinese retail channels.

Wall Street Insights previously mentioned that although panic voices of a "price collapse" emerged from the retail end, Wall Street and industry research institutions generally emphasized that the spot market is primarily composed of PCs and consumer electronics, which at most account for a low single-digit percentage share of total market transactions.

Moving away from the noise of the spot market, the signals for server-side demand are clear and strong.

Latest reports from both Goldman Sachs and the South Korean brokerage Daishin Securities point out that the enterprise contract market has not been affected. Major cloud service providers' demand for server memory remains urgent, and the supply-demand fundamentals have not undergone a substantive reversal.

According to the Goldman Sachs report, in February, the total revenue of Taiwan-based server ODM manufacturers (including Inventec, Quanta, Wiwynn, and Wistron) grew by 84% year-on-year and 7% month-on-month, maintaining a year-on-year growth rate of over 80% for four consecutive months. This was primarily due to the rapid ramp-up of rack-level AI server shipments and the strong growth of ASIC AI servers.

Aspeed, the world's largest server BMC chip supplier, saw its February revenue grow by 66% year-on-year, remaining steady even against the high base of February 2025. Storage distributor Supreme Electronics saw its February revenue grow by 137% year-on-year, with robust demand at the channel level clearly visible.

Daishin Securities' channel survey also provided a more convincing detail: a certain large cloud service provider has decided to procure server DDR4 at a price exceeding that of HBM3e. Ryu Hyung-geun wrote:

If real demand had begun to weaken, it would be impossible to explain why buyers are willing to pay a premium for traditional products.