The retail army has found its new favorite trade for 2026: Memory & Storage.
Driven by an “unprecedented” global shortage of memory chips needed for AI infrastructure, individual investors are aggressively piling into US storage names, betting on a multi-year pricing super-cycle.
🌊 THE INFLOW TSUNAMI: According to Vanda Research, the rotation is violent and targeted:
- SanDisk ($SNDK): Shares are already up ~65% YTD. The stock saw a record $7.1 million in retail net buying on Monday alone.
- Western Digital ($WDC): Saw nearly $10 million in inflows in the first two weeks of January.
- Micron ($MU): Up 18% YTD (following a 240% rally in 2025), cementing its status as a retail darling alongside the pure-play storage firms.
📉 THE SUPPLY CRUNCH: The “Why” is simple: AI needs massive memory, and there isn’t enough to go around.
- Samsung Co-CEO TM Roh described the shortage as “unprecedented,” warning that constraints could persist for years as data centers hog supply.
- The Squeeze: With AI and consumer electronics companies fighting for dwindling inventory, pricing power has shifted entirely to the manufacturers.
🎢 THE “MEME” FACTOR: It’s not just fundamentals; it’s momentum. SanDisk, which re-listed in Feb 2025 and has risen nearly 10-fold since, has become the top holding of the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF ($MEME). Interactive Brokers notes that SanDisk and Micron are now among the top 5 most active stocks on their platform, signaling a thematic frenzy.
💡 ANALYST TAKEAWAY: Retail investors are effectively front-running the supply chain crisis. Having ridden the GPU wave (Nvidia) in 2024/25, they are now targeting the bottleneck. With SanDisk seeing record inflows, the market is pricing in a “Super-Cycle” where memory makers can dictate terms to hyperscalers.
👇 Semiconductor Pros: Are we entering a prolonged memory super-cycle, or is retail buying the top of a cyclical peak?