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Micron Technology (MU 5.68%) has delivered one of the most explosive performances among semiconductor stocks in 2026. To date, the memory company's shares are up 241% this year, making it the second-highest gainer in the Nasdaq-100.

After such a meteoric rally, most investors might assume the easy money has already been made. But in my view, Micron's true potential is only beginning to unfold. The catalyst that powered its meteoric ascent -- unprecedented demand for advanced memory in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers -- is accelerating, not peaking.

That sets the stage for Micron to enjoy substantially higher earnings power, and puts the stock price on a trajectory that could lead it to trade at $2,000 or more within the next year.

Image source: Micron Technology.

Breaking down Micron's booming business Over the last few quarters, Micron has meaningfully accelerated both its revenue and earnings growth. The reason is simple: The company's products sit at the center of the AI infrastructure build-out. Hyperscalers are pouring record sums of capital expenditures into the construction of new data centers, which has resulted in acute shortages of DRAM, NAND, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) -- all three of which Micron specializes in.

These shortages are giving Micron significant pricing power in one of the chip market's highest-growth segments. Unlike past cycles for the memory market, where demand was broad and easily satisfied, today's AI-driven demand is concentrated in specific products where Micron holds a strong competitive position alongside SK Hynix and Samsung. The implementation of long-term strategic customer agreements further locks in revenue and profit visibility -- helping reduce the traditional volatility of the memory business.

Taken together, the result is a clear upward trajectory for Micron's top and bottom lines. The narrative for the memory and data storage market is no longer a cyclical story, but rather one of structural expansion in an expanding addressable market. That puts Micron in a powerful position.

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Micron's path to $2,000 per share Consensus estimates from Wall Street analysts currently project that Micron's EPS will be $73.32 for the current fiscal year and $149.64 for the next fiscal year. These figures clearly reflect staggering optimism as the AI infrastructure build-out continues.

MU EPS Estimates for Current Fiscal Year data by YCharts.

With that said, Micron stock trades at a modest forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 6.7. I think that's a conservative level relative to the company's expected earnings growth. Taking the point further, that low multiple could indicate that the market is still pricing Micron as if it were in a cyclical industry, rather than viewing it as a hypergrowth business undergoing a fundamental shift.

I think Micron's current valuation profile leaves significant room for a rerating as the durability of AI-driven memory demand becomes more widely recognized by growth investors. For the stock price to hit $2,000 if the forward P/E holds steady at 6.7 would require next year's EPS to reach about $298. That's essentially a double from Wall Street's already aggressive forecast.

The more realistic path to reaching a $2,000 stock price is for Micron's forward P/E to rise closer to 13. While that would be a meaningful expansion from current levels, investors have seen similar step-ups by other memory and storage stocks, such as Sandisk.

In short, I think Micron's days of trading at a deep cyclical discount are limited. The foundation for meaningful share price appreciation has been set, making such a stock surge not just plausible, but highly probable.

Micron Technology (MU 5.68%) once again turned in a spectacular quarter when it reported its fiscal third-quarter results after the bell on June 24. While the stock initially surged, it has since given back most of its gains. The stock is still up around 236% on the year.

Let's dig into the memory maker's results and prospects to see whether the artificial intelligence (AI) stock is a buy.

Micron is hitting on all cylinders Micron is one of the three major DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) manufacturers, and it has been benefiting from soaring DRAM and NAND (flash) memory prices, as both remain in short supply due to the data center build-out. Over 75% of Micron's revenue comes from DRAM, with the rest largely from NAND.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

The DRAM market is being fueled by the need for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), packaged with AI chips such as graphics processing units (GPUs) to optimize performance. The fast-growing inference market, meanwhile, tends to be even more memory-intensive than AI model training, further driving demand dynamics. Micron's HBM supply is booked out through 2027 and into 2028, and it sees the total addressable market reaching $100 billion in 2027.

It noted that the industry outlook for both the DRAM and NAND markets is that demand will continue to significantly outpace supply. It said that supply challenges for HBM and DRAM, in particular, remain "severe." It upped its capital expenditure (capex) budget to $27 billion this fiscal year as it begins construction on new greenfield projects to increase supply.

Overall, for its fiscal third quarter, Micron reported that its revenue increased from $9.3 billion to $41.5 billion, easily surpassing the $35.8 billion consensus, as compiled by LSEG.

By segment, cloud memory revenue surged fourfold to $13.8 billion, while core data center revenue climbed from $1.5 billion in the year-ago period to $11.5 billion. Mobile revenue jumped from $3.3 billion to $11.5 billion, while automotive and embedded revenue rose from $1.1 billion to $4.6 billion. Gross margins surged to 84.6%, up from just 37.7% a year ago, and were up from 74.4% in fiscal Q2.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) came in at $24.67 compared to $1.68 a year ago. That was well above the $20.78 adjusted EPS analysts expected.

Looking ahead, Micron guided for fiscal Q4 revenue of around $50 billion with gross margins of approximately 86%. The company is looking for adjusted EPS of about $30.73 at the midpoint.

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Despite its continued surging revenue and gross margin expansion, Micron stock remains cheap, trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 7 times fiscal 2027 analyst estimates. While historically a boom-and-bust cyclical business, the company now has about 40% of its revenue locked up in long-term strategic customer agreements. At the same time, there are a few signs that the memory market will be in supply-demand balance anytime soon, given the surge in AI infrastructure spending and demand.

As such, the stock looks attractive at current levels.

Every so often, a company's numbers stop making sense next to its soaring profits. Micron Technology (MU 5.68%) is having one of those moments. In its fiscal third quarter (the period ended May 28, 2026), the memory maker earned $24.67 per share on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis. Its quarterly dividend, declared the same week, was $0.15 -- the same $0.15 it declared last quarter. A company earning that much cannot keep paying that little forever.

Something has to give.

Image source: Getty Images.

A cash machine, for now The quarter was a blowout in the truest sense. Revenue rose 346% year over year to a record $41.46 billion, and net income reached $28.24 billion, powered by demand for the high-bandwidth memory that goes into AI accelerators. Management guided for even more in the current quarter: about $50 billion in revenue.

To grasp the scale, Micron earned more in this single quarter than it did in some entire years of the last cycle. Revenue of $41.46 billion was up from $9.3 billion a year earlier, and that guide of $50 billion would be another 20% jump on top of it. High-bandwidth memory -- the specialized chips stacked next to AI processors -- is booked out well into next year, which is why the company can guide with such unusual confidence.

"Micron's record fiscal Q3 financial results and even stronger outlook for Q4 reflect the strategic value of memory in the AI era," said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in the company's earnings release.

And, unsurprisingly, the cash is piling up.

Micron generated $25.4 billion of operating cash flow and $18.3 billion of adjusted free cash flow in the quarter, ending with about $30.2 billion in cash and investments. Set the $0.15 quarterly dividend against $24.67 of quarterly earnings and the payout ratio is well under 1% -- almost a rounding error.

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Where the cash goes next So where does all that money go?

Three doors are open: a much bigger dividend, share buybacks, or reinvestment in the business. History offers a warning on that last one. Memory is cyclical, and makers have a habit of plowing cash into new capacity at the peak, only to watch prices crash once it comes online. Micron is doing some of that already -- capital expenditures were $7.1 billion in the quarter and rising as it builds cleanroom capacity for AI memory.

Management has been fairly explicit about the sequence. It says it expects to return 100% of its excess cash to shareholders over time, and plans to step up capital returns later this year.

So, what is its plan? Capacity first, bigger shareholder returns after. A boosted dividend and buybacks are the pressure valve that hasn't been opened yet.

This order of priorities when it comes to how Micron plans to deploy its excess cash makes sense. Buy back a lot of stock at the top of a memory cycle, and you risk overpaying right before earnings roll over. Hike the dividend too aggressively, and you may have to defend it through the next downturn. Micron has been burned by both mistakes before, and its cautious approach here arguably reflects a management team that remembers exactly what the bottom of a memory cycle feels like.

For a dividend stock trading at about 22 times earnings, that gap between what Micron makes and what it pays is the clearest sign of how extreme this memory up cycle has become. I'd expect the payout and buybacks to climb meaningfully once those commitments free up.

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NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) and Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) both delivered blockbuster earnings tied to the same AI capex wave, yet the businesses behind the tickers look nothing alike.

NVIDIA sells the compute platform. Micron sells the memory that feeds it. With $10,000 to allocate, the question is whether you want the ecosystem owner or the picks-and-shovels supplier catching a once-in-a-decade pricing cycle.

Blackwell Prints Cash. HBM4 Rewrites Micron’s P&L. NVIDIA’s Q1 FY2027 landed with revenue of $81.61 billion, up 85.23% YoY, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.87. Data Center did the heavy lifting at $75.25 billion (+92% YoY), with networking (InfiniBand, Spectrum-X, NVLink) growing 199%.

Jensen Huang called it “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history.” The Blackwell 300 ramp, Vera Rubin roadmap, and hyperscaler commitments from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta suggest the pipeline is booked well into 2027.

Micron’s fiscal Q3 2026 was arguably wilder. Revenue hit $41.46 billion, up 345.72% YoY, EPS came in at $25.11 against a $20.28 estimate, and GAAP gross margin exploded to 84.6% from 37.7% a year earlier.

HBM4 in high-volume shipments to a lead AI accelerator customer is doing what pricing power looks like on paper. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra pointed to “multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements” as the mechanism designed to tame the historical cyclicality that has burned Micron shareholders before.

Business Driver NVIDIA Micron Main Growth Engine Data Center GPUs and networking HBM4 and cloud memory Gross Margin 75.0% non-GAAP 84.9% non-GAAP Guidance $91B ±2% $50B ±$1B Ecosystem Moat vs. Commodity Upcycle NVIDIA’s advantage is CUDA, the software layer nobody has cloned, plus a platform that stretches from Omniverse to DRIVE Hyperion (Hyundai, BYD, Uber) to Isaac GR00T robotics. That breadth justifies the premium multiple.

Micron’s advantage is scarcer: it is the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, and HBM supply is tight. The catch is concentration. HBM4 volume hinges heavily on a single lead customer, and a $325M Q3 debt-prepayment loss reminds you Micron still runs a capital-hungry, cyclical business.

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Valuation tells the story. NVIDIA trades at a 30x trailing P/E and 23x forward. Micron sits at 26x trailing and a startling 8x forward, which either signals deep skepticism about margin durability or a genuine mispricing.

The Next Catalysts I’m Tracking For NVIDIA, the tell will be whether Q2 revenue lands near the $91 billion guide without any China Data Center contribution, and how quickly Vera Rubin sampling firms up.

For Micron, I want to see FQ4 gross margin actually reach the 86% guide and confirmation that HBM4E stays on track for 2027. Analyst targets sit at $301.62 for NVDA and $1,454.12 for MU, though heavy insider selling at both names deserves a raised eyebrow.

Why I’d Split the $10,000, Leaning NVIDIA If I had to pick one, I’d lean NVIDIA for the core of the position. The platform economics, $48.55 billion in quarterly free cash flow, and the $80 billion buyback give me a stability profile Micron structurally cannot match.

That said, Micron is the more interesting swing trade. If HBM pricing holds through 2027 and the Strategic Customer Agreements do what Mehrotra claims, the forward multiple looks too cheap.

I’d size Micron smaller, treat it as a cyclical call option on AI memory, and acknowledge that a supply normalization would hit it harder than NVIDIA. If you prefer to sleep at night, tilt heavier to NVIDIA. If you want the higher-variance rebound trade, Micron earns a slot.

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Last week, the artificial intelligence (AI) community held its breath ahead of Micron Technology's (MU 5.68%) fiscal third-quarter earnings call. Both revenue and earnings per share (EPS) absolutely blew Wall Street's expectations out of the water. But interestingly enough, sales and profits weren't the most important takeaway from the report.

What most investors are overlooking is how Micron is reshaping its customer relationships. The company has implemented strategic customer agreements (SCAs) at a time when AI is driving unprecedented demand for memory and storage. These multiyear contracts provide committed volumes of DRAM and NAND while bringing higher revenue visibility and margin stability than traditional arrangements during prior boom cycles.

By shifting from transactional sales to long-term partnerships, Micron is quietly addressing the core bottleneck of matching the explosive demand for AI-driven infrastructure with reliable supply -- positioning the company for more durable financial performance in the years ahead.

Image source: Micron Technology.

Breaking down the scope of Micron's SCAs According to management, Micron has 16 SCAs across the data center, consumer, and automotive segments. To me, this is the most important figure from Micron's entire earnings report.

These agreements include four "very large customers" and three medium-sized businesses. The balance consists of smaller automotive companies. Management expects that once all the SCAs are completed, approximately half or more of the company's total revenue will stem from these agreements.

The breadth across end markets -- from AI accelerators to smartphones, PCs, and vehicles -- demonstrates that the business model applies broadly rather than being limited to a few hyperscalers.

How are Micron's SCAs structured? Micron's SCAs are structured as take-or-pay contracts with binding commitments to purchase specific volumes over multiyear terms. Most agreements last for five years, spanning calendar 2026 through the end of 2030. The smaller automotive agreements generally cover three years, however.

Management pointed out that the pricing framework includes a floor price that ensures robust gross margins well above Micron's historical peak levels, paired with a ceiling at or near current market prices for existing products. A smaller portion of the SCAs feature fixed pricing, while the rest remain subject to market conditions. Among the SCAs, 14 carry a cumulative minimum revenue commitment of approximately $100 billion over the remaining term.

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Why do Micron's SCAs matter for long-term value? Micron's SCAs fundamentally transform the company's business model by replacing cyclical spot pricing with contracted supply assurance and technology collaboration. In an environment where DRAM and NAND demand is expected to remain tight well beyond calendar year 2027, customers gain visibility into future memory availability while Micron secures predictable volumes and a floor on profit margins.

The result is significantly improved visibility into revenue, gross margins, and free cash flow -- all of which mitigate earnings volatility. The goal of the SCAs is to lock in a baseline of revenue and high-margin business through 2030, ultimately supporting higher, more predictable earnings per share, as floor pricing insulates profitability even if spot prices moderate.

This newfound predictability reduces the historical cyclical discount applied to memory stocks, supporting a more premium valuation profile for Micron over the multiyear horizon of these agreements. The combination of volume commitments and margin floors creates a more resilient earnings stream that aligns with accelerating AI infrastructure build-outs.

While smart investors understand that Micron's execution on new fab capacity and next-generation architectures remains essential, the SCAs meaningfully de-risk the company's financial outlook and reinforce its position as a transformational supplier in the AI chip value chain. In my eyes, this makes investing in Micron stock more compelling as a core position rather than a purely cyclical play to trade.

HomeIndustriesComputers/ElectronicsTech StocksTech StocksMemory chips were once seen as an unglamorous business, but Micron is betting AI will change the game for goodJuly 3, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET

Micron remains based in Boise, Idaho, and has survived multiple boom-and-bust memory cycles to become one of the world’s top DRAM producers. Photo: Getty ImagesA little more than a year ago, Boise, Idaho, was known as a charming city boasting a tree-lined river greenbelt and a college football stadium with bright blue artificial turf.

Today, it’s seen as a crucial hub of the artificial-intelligence boom.

Michael Burry, widely known as ‘The Big Short’ investor who predicted the 2008 housing market collapse, has opened a new short position in Micron (NASDAQ: MU).

According to a post on Substack titled ‘Trading Post July 2, 2026,’ Burry initiated the short Micron position, reportedly at $1,051.87 per share, arguing that the memory chipmaker’s rally (209% year-to-date) has reached extreme levels.

Elaborating on the decision, the investor claimed that the company’s valuation, technical setup, and long-term cyclical history all point to significant downside. ‘Micron defines cyclical like no other,’ he wrote, referencing the stock’s 34 drawdowns of more than 30% over the past 42 years.

Michael Burry calls Micron a ‘destroyer of capital’ Burry further argued that the shares are now trading further above their 200-day moving average (MA) than at any point since 1984 – ‘not even during the dot-com peak.’

Accordingly, the investor criticized the company’s long-term profitability, citing a median return on invested capital (ROIC) of 4% and a median return on equity (ROE) of 7%, which he described as ‘terrible.’

Highlighting his displeasure further, Burry stated that ‘Micron is a destroyer of capital’ at least once every three quarters, pointing to decades of negative returns and free cash flow before concluding that the company’s latest rally has been driven mostly by investor psychology, not fundamentals.

“One quarter in every three, Micron is a destroyer of capital,” he wrote.

Moreover, ‘The Big Short’ also contended that Micron is no longer the industry’s memory leader. This, he argued, is because capital expenditure decisions by South Korean competitors largely determine how much the company must invest to remain competitive.

Burry keeps betting against semiconductor stocks The Micron trade is consistent with Burry’s increasingly bearish stance on semiconductor stocks, which wiped $137 billion in a day after he made his post.

Some of his other short positions, disclosed in a June 30 post, included Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Discussing Elon Musk’s company, Burry argued that while shareholders did welcome Tesla’s weekly 11% climb to $420.60, it was nothing more than a temporary move ahead of a continued decline in the long run. However, the trader did not disclose the scale of his bet.

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Key Takeaways Micron is riding one of its strongest profit cycles as higher memory prices lift revenues and margins.AI servers, HBM, enterprise SSDs and advanced DRAM demand continue to outpace industry supply.Strategic customer agreements now cover about 20% of MU's DRAM volume and one-third of NAND volume. Micron Technology, Inc. (MU - Free Report) is enjoying one of the strongest profit cycles in its history, and higher memory prices remain a major reason behind this momentum. Robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), enterprise SSDs and advanced DRAM continues to outpace industry supply, creating a favorable pricing environment.

In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Micron Technology reported record revenues of $41.46 billion, up 74% sequentially and 346% year over year. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 84.9% from 74.9% in the previous quarter and 39% in the year-ago quarter, while non-GAAP earnings jumped to $25.11 per share from $12.20 in the previous quarter and $1.91 in the year-ago quarter. DRAM revenues increased 67% sequentially, supported by average selling prices rising in the low-60% range. NAND revenues climbed 99%, with average selling prices surging in the mid-80% range.

The pricing outlook remains encouraging. Micron Technology expects DRAM and NAND demand to exceed industry supply beyond calendar year 2027 as AI adoption accelerates across data centers, PCs, smartphones and automotive applications. Limited wafer capacity, slower technology transitions and expanding HBM production are likely to keep memory supplies tight, supporting healthy pricing.

Micron Technology is also strengthening pricing visibility through long-term strategic customer agreements covering a growing portion of its business. The company announced 16 strategic customer agreements (SCAs) across data center, consumer and auto markets in the third quarter. These agreements represent roughly 20% of DRAM volume and one-third of NAND volume over the covered period.

These contracts, combined with continued AI-driven demand and disciplined industry supply growth, should help the company sustain elevated margins. While memory remains a cyclical business, current industry dynamics suggest Micron Technology's profit boom still has room to run. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, the company projects a non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 86%, indicating a robust expansion from the year-ago quarter’s level of 45.7%.

How Are Micron’s Semiconductor Peers Performing on Margins?Major semiconductor players, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD - Free Report) , are also benefiting from the AI boom.

NVIDIA continues to lead the AI accelerator market, with data center revenues growing 92% year over year in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. The company’s non-GAAP gross margin reached 75% from 60.8% in the year-ago quarter, supported by strong pricing power for its AI GPUs and networking products. NVIDIA’s growth indirectly benefits Micron Technology because AI servers using NVIDIA chips require large amounts of DRAM and HBM memory.

Advanced Micro Devices is also gaining momentum in AI and data center markets. Its EPYC server processors and Instinct AI accelerators are helping expand enterprise adoption. AMD’s data center revenues surged 57% year over year to a record $5.78 billion in the first quarter of 2026, while non-GAAP gross margins expanded 180 basis points to 55.4%. As AI server deployments rise, Advanced Micro Devices’ growth is increasing demand for advanced memory and storage products supplied by Micron Technology.

MU’s Price Performance, Valuation and EstimatesShares of Micron Technology have surged around 242.6% year to date compared with the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 16.8%.

Micron Technology YTD Price Return Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, MU trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 8.52, significantly lower than the sector’s average of 23.18.

Micron Technology 12-Month Forward P/E Ratio
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Micron Technology’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings implies a year-over-year increase of approximately 791% and 107%, respectively. Bottom-line estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward in the past seven days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Micron Technology currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Chasing ‘Bubble Peaks’Burry disclosed the thesis on his private Substack, expanding his broader bearish campaign against overextended AI infrastructure equities.

Despite Micron’s massive gains over the past year, driven by aggressive artificial intelligence demand, Burry revealed he shorted the stock “even though it was down a good amount,” as of Thursday, firmly betting that the current semiconductor frenzy is unsustainably overheated.

He highlighted that the stock’s extension over its 200-day moving average has “never been as extended as in 2026, not even during the dot-com peak,” framing the chip rally as a late-stage phenomenon typically seen near “bubble peaks.”

Incinerating Corporate CapitalThe core of Burry’s thesis rests on Micron’s underlying forty-year financials, which he argues are being dangerously ignored by retail traders and institutional bulls.

Over the last 42 years, the company has logged a median return on invested capital (ROIC) of just 4% and a median return on equity (ROE) of 7%, figures he labeled “frankly terrible” against a double-digit cost of capital.

The Scarcity Bias TrapBurry concluded that bulls are falling victim to a “smorgasbord” of psychological traps, particularly “scarcity bias” regarding corporate claims that High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is “sold out through 2026.”

While the market currently deems the hardware uniquely “precious,” Burry maintains it is simply a cyclical commodity tracking toward a familiar, brutal correction.

How Has MU Performed in 2026?MU shares have advanced by 241.81% year-to-date, down 8.32% over the last month, and 701.35% higher over the year. The stock closed 5.49% lower at $975.56 apiece on Thursday, and it was up 0.15% in after-hours trading.

Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings indicate that MU maintains a strong price trend in the long, short, and medium terms, with a good growth score.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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HomeMarkets‘Big Short’ investor has been wagering against AI trades for monthsJuly 3, 2026, 7:16 a.m. ET

Michael Burry has reportedly taken out a short position on Micron Technology. Photo: MicronMichael Burry has intensified his bearish stance against the AI trade with a reported bet against Micron Technology, one of the most important plays in the memory space.

The investor portrayed in the “The Big Short” making bets against the housing market during the subprime-mortgage crisis, revealed that move in a Thursday Substack post, widely reported on X accounts and financial publications such as Seeking Alpha.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Readers are advised to fact-check thoroughly before making any investment related decisions; this reflects the personal views of the author and should not be pursued as formal financial or investment advice in any manner. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, errors may exist in the data and financial projections presented. The author is not responsible for any financial gains or losses incurred from investments made based on this content.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss:

Memory’s wild ride.Micron’s earnings.Meta and prediction markets.Can Zuckerberg innovate?Alphabet joins the DowWhy the Dow doesn’t matter.To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on June 24, 2026.

Travis Hoium: It's Micron Day on Wall Street. Motley Fool’s Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool’s Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren, and guys, I never thought I would say this, but Micron has a huge earnings report after the market closed today. This is a company that most of us just didn't pay attention to for most of the last couple of decades. But they are the company that everybody is watching, at least for the next 12 hours or so. Lou, I'll just leave it there. What are your thoughts on Micron being the talk of the day?

Lou Whiteman: No pressure, Micron. Just the fate of the entire global stock market is on your shoulders. No pressure at all. Context, why am I saying that? Right now, no company is more emblematic of the AI rally than Micron. Believe it or not, the stock is up 270% this year. It's up a lot more over the last 12 months. It is the single biggest point contributor to the S&P 500. It is literally the engine that is driving this rally. But look, historically, the reason, Travis, we don't think about these companies is memory chips are commodity. There are a lot of competitors with a lot of options for capacity expansion. A lot of people like flirting with rivals as we speak now. In the last few weeks, we've suddenly become a lot more skeptical about how much higher the AI rally can go. Back to the fate of the entire global stock market. I hate to make short-term predictions, but it’s fair to say that any flinch tonight when they release earnings, any disappointment would reinforce the fears that had driven the sell-off in the last few days. But a strong showing, I think it might just ease concerns and draw buyers back in. Good luck, Micron. Apparently, we are basing the entire AI trade on a historically commoditized memory provider.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, Rachel, this is going to be an interesting one because there's a lot of threads to pull on. A lot of times, you look at earnings, and you go, How did the company do compared to a year ago? How did they do compared to analysts’ estimates? That's typically how stocks react. What were analysts expecting? Or were they pricing in? Then what did the company actually report? What did they guide? There's going to be a lot more to it than that has to do with high bandwidth memory, what's happening with competitors and pricing. What are the things that you're looking for in this earnings report that may actually extend far beyond Micro?

Rachel Warren: A lot to look at here, and it's important to note, this is not the Micron of a couple years ago. Wall Street's guiding for 1,000% jump in earnings per share. Just going to take a moment and take that in. This is not the business that we used to know. This is a newly minted trillion-dollar company. They've sold out their HiPAM with memory or HBM capacity all the way through the end of 2026. They've got their advanced HBM3 chips. Those are essentially digital gold. They're the backbone for that next-gen hardware like Nvidia's Blackwell architecture. This is also a company that just inked a major enterprise deal with Anthropic to power their Claude models. Demand is very much outstripping supply. There's a lot of pricing power there. Management has guided for an 81% gross margin. Revenue is looking to pass $35 billion for a single quarter.

Just to set the stage a little bit for where the business is at, and that really brings us back to what we saw in the markets yesterday.here are a few factors at play. We had the announcement from South Korea's SK Hynix that sent shock waves through the sector in terms of their shifting production timelines, but also we're seeing news about how competitors in China are aggressively leveraging their own semiconductor capacity. You've got major competitor CXMT. They are building out a truly massive fabrication facility with really one defined, clear goal, which is to flood the global market with cheap legacy drip. They’ve got multibillion-dollar state investments, a massive Shanghai facility. Essentially looking to outproduce established players. That's something that I think the market is worried about when it comes to the likes of Micron.

What I will note, though, this is a company, Micron that's building very highly specialized, high margin ultra complex HBM infrastructure. It's required for advanced AI applications. We're also looking at a reality despite pressure that it was under yesterday. This is a business that's skyrocketed more than 700% over the last 12 months, trailing PE multiple of about 49. I like the business. This is not a stock that's even close to being undervalued right now.

Travis Hoium: Lou, do you agree with that? Because this is one of those businesses where we've seen a lot of these cycles in the past. I think if you go back to the dotcom bubble, Micron was one of those companies. Hey, there's going to be demand forever. Then suddenly you overbuild. Rachel talked about high bandwidth memory is really the thing that they're focusing on right now, but they're giving up DRAM as a result, and who's popping in? China comes in and says, Hey, we would be happy to take that business. The company that I am really curious about is Apple here. My understanding is that Apple would love to have some of these Chinese suppliers as one of their suppliers, and they're feeling a lot of pricing pressure. But that's been something the U.S. government has not been super fond of. But if we're going to see $2,000 iPhones, maybe those things are looked past just a little bit.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. Here's the thing. This is why you never invest based on one metric. Because Micron today trades at under 20 times forward earnings. That looks really good. But what you miss there, the context is, I think it was Rachel said, the 1,000% jump in earnings per share. It is cheap if that is sustainable. If this is the new normal, if from here, this is how they earn, if they really are just a different company now, this is a buying opportunity. Call me skeptical here, I think, as you say, there's just a lot of choices. I think there's actually a risk here that if they put too much chips in the AI basket and abandon the core business that drives a lot of their volumes or at least allows others to build up there while they're focusing.

Travis Hoium: You're talking about DRAM in particular?

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, they better hope this AI sustained spending pays last forever. Again, we've talked about what that means for the rest of the ecos, it just doesn't seem like that's possible that everybody wins here. But yeah, it's all based on what has happened. It works today. May it long continue as someone who doesn't have any short positions, but I have zero desire to buy this company in general and definitely not right now.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, I want to put some numbers to those valuations that you were talking about estimates for fiscal 2027 is for $121.80 per share in earnings. The earnings for fiscal 2023, negative $5.30. The big question here is, as this stock is trading for over $1,000 per share, is that $100 the real earnings number long term, or is it the closer to zero that we've had over most of the past decade? We will maybe learn a little bit more after the market closes. When we come back, we are going to get to Meta's prediction market. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Meta made some news yesterday that I thought was really interesting, Rachel. They're getting into the prediction market. Meta stock is theoretically pretty cheap, so I always want to take a look at that one. But then you look at them chasing all these random things that don't necessarily seem to fit into their core business. But what are we talking about when we're talking about Meta looking into prediction markets?

Rachel Warren: Yeah, I feel like this took some investors by surprise. They're building a new app called Arena, and it's designed to be essentially a direct play on the fast-growing world of prediction markets. If you're curious how it works, you've got to think of Arena like a video game where you trade real-world outcomes. The app asks a simple yes-or-no question. You don't use cash. You use free points to buy a yes-or-no ticket. Then the more popular answer gets, the more points that ticket cost to buy. If your guess actually comes true, the ticket pays out. If you're wrong, you lose your points. Right now, there's no real money involved, which is very essential from the legal front because it essentially allows Meta to sidestep a lot of the global gambling laws. They can launch the app everywhere instantly. My view of this is Meta is going to be using a lot of these free guesses to harvest millions of pieces of data on human behavior to train their AI models. I think that is seemingly the most valuable use case here. I'm still curious whether this is actually going to be a needle mover for the business.

Lou Whiteman: You might be right. But do we really need AI models trained off of what random Facebook users are?

Travis Hoium: Well, Reddit's pretty good data for Google.

Lou Whiteman: That's different. There's a lot more there. Look, here's the deal. For one, remember, this is not gambling. They named it after a sports venue, but it's not gambling. Arena. I love that. But look, always count on Zuck to be distracted by whatever the shiny object is that's out there. That is what's going on here. Maybe it is some white master AI play. I think it's just what’s hot? Can we get in on that? There is logic here. This is another thing that should be easily spread over their massive social media customer base. I don't think it's a massive use of resources here. Look, Facebook Marketplace, I think is a good example it is at best, the second-best option, and probably I'm being kind here. But they've leveraged it over the massive customer base, so it is worth the time, even if it isn't the dominant player. I think predictions can be the same here. It's inferior to the standalones, but yet is still viable. End of the day, if you're an investor, this is Meta reminding you of who they are. Alphabet, Amazon, there's a lot of these big tech names that are diversified, that are betting on different things. But there isn't the same throw it at a wall and see if it sticks attitude. This is always what Meta has done. It hasn't been an issue for investors before. Don't think it will be from here, but don't say you weren't warned.

Travis Hoium: One thing this reminds me of is Marketplace, them going into the Craigslist business, if you will. That's been a massive success. I know we use that all the time, even though we don't really use Facebook all that much. I also wanted to touch on the Kylie Jenner is now getting into the Meta glasses. Lou, as our fashion and tech early adopter on the show, what are your thoughts of the Starfire glasses that Kylie is showing off?

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, Kylie. Full disclosure, I had to Google exactly who Kylie was, what Kylie was. I did think of other Kylies from the '90s or 2000s, but yeah. I've heard of Kylie Jenner. I'm happy that she's happy with these glasses. I think that Meta is onto something here. I'm going to reverse course only because by comparison to what Snap announced, Meta looks like a real winner. They're not charging $2,000 for something with a couple hours of battery life. They're not saying it's going to replace the phone, and yet you're going to have to charge it every couple hours. I think, Wow, this looks common sense. Meta generates $56 billion in sales per quarter. This is not a needle mover. I'm skeptical about the whole “we're going to defeat the iPhone and create a new ecosystem” and a stealth play on that. I think it's just going to be a novelty product, but Meta generates cash, and Meta likes to spend cash. We know that. Like I said, I am much more bullish about this than I am the snaps.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, Rachel, this seems at least a little bit meaningful. This is a huge sponsorship, and they're moving at least further into the fashion direction, which is clearly not what Snap was doing last week.

Rachel Warren: These celebrity partnerships are nothing new in the world of big tech, so I think it's probably a smart move on their part. The frames look very trendy. They're like, trendy, slim fashion sunglasses. The case actually has a built-in makeup mirror. There's a digital AI assistant built into the glasses. It's actually voiced by Kylie Jenner herself. You've got a standard version that costs $299. Then, if you want that voice profile, it goes up to $399. Not sure yet if this is a project that is going to be a real driver of Meta's business moving forward. I think we've seen so far that the adoption curve for this type of hardware isn't necessarily there, but I do think experimenting with more fashion-oriented glasses versus a lot of the clunky competitors that we've seen. Perhaps that's a smart angle to take. I don't think this is something that Meta needs. I think this is something they're looking to try out, as we've seen with a lot of their projects in the past. If you're an investor, I think it's something to pay attention to. I don't think it's something that's going to be driving the business, at least not in the near term.

Travis Hoium: A decade into the VR and AR experiment, we're maybe getting a little bit closer to something we can actually buy as regular consumers and not feel too goofy wearing around. We'll see if there's a prediction market on when we can get Lou in a pair of these glasses. When we come back, we're going to touch on Alphabet joining the Dow, you're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We've talked a lot about SpaceX going into indexes over the past couple of weeks, but Alphabet is now making its way into the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Rachel, what do we need to?

Rachel Warren: Alphabet’s joining the Dow. This is effective before the opening bell next Monday, June 29th, they're replacing Verizon. This is a pretty massive shift away from obviously a legacy telecom player and very much into the core of the AI economy. The Dow is a price-weighted index, so stock price dictates how much influence a company holds. Verizon's low share price meant that they had represented a very small portion of 0.5% of the index. Alphabet, with their share price is going to instantly have a 4% weighting. That is going to be the seventh largest component in the entire index right behind American Express. Alphabet is going to be the fifth member of the Mag7 to enter the Dow. Now, it's worth noting. This isn't necessarily a big mover of share price actually, back when Amazon and Nvidia were added back in 2024, their actual inclusion days were big duds. But I think the big takeaway for me is you're swapping out a slow growth utility like Verizon for a hyperscalar like Alphabet, very much aggressively increasing exposure to the mega cap tech and Cloud infrastructure place.

Lou Whiteman: Basically that. It's relevant for Alphabet shareholders. To me, this is the Dow telling on itself. This is a reminder of how pointless the Dow is. You have 30 companies picked largely well after the world has realized their value. Verizon was the only representation from the communication sector. What the committee finally heard about the Internet and is giving up on Ma Bell. As Rachel said, the price weighting means that you're 0.5% of an index of 30 stocks, meaning that Verizon's movement had zero impact on Dow, so the index basically had zero meaningful representation from communications here. It's tempting to be the shock jock and say, Okay, this means Alphabet's on their way down. I don't think that's the case, but the committee has a terrible track record of being late to the party. I don't know. Maybe it means that Alphabet is so mainstream now that it can't significantly outperform. I doubt it, though. I think this is just them trying to stay relevant and Alphabet will just go back to business.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, it's so interesting to see the difference these indexes and the way that they're covered on a day-to-day basis when I was growing up, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, first of all, was mostly an industrial average, second of all, it was the thing that was quoted every night on the evening news. The Dow was up 15 points today or down 10 points today, and people generally knew what that meant. Now we talk about the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ-100. Those are better indicators, and those are market cap weighted, meaning that they're weighted based on how big the actual company is. It's maybe a better indicator overall.

Lou Whiteman: One more, just not related to this, but just a public service announcement here on the points. A 100 points were a lot of points when the index was I don't know, 1,000 points. But the index is 52,000 today. We are still going crazy about 100 points. I don't really want to have to get into the math here, but it's a lot less significant. Yeah, always look at things in percentage. But just ignore the Dow.

Travis Hoium: We have moved on, I guess, from the Dow, but I think it's still interesting that this is something that we talk about, and now it's become a tech index, more than it is a industrial index.

As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool's editorial standards. This is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure, please check on our show. For Rachel Warren, Lou Whiteman, and Kristi Waterworth behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening. See you here tomorrow.

Wall Street was torn between opposite catalysts on Thursday morning.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +1.14%) climbed 0.7% by 12:11 p.m. ET. The S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.00%) dropped 0.2% at the same time, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.80%) fell 0.8%.

The culprit behind the confusion: Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is going one way while nearly everything else in tech is going the other.

^IXIC data by YCharts

Employment miss meets Middle East stalemate The iPhone maker jumped 4%, adding $182 billion in market capitalization. The company reportedly told its parts suppliers to prepare for a large-scale rollout of foldable iPhones this fall. The expected foldable unit count for 2026 is now 10 million, up from 7 to 8 million in earlier forecasts. That's alongside roughly 70 million iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max handsets, setting Apple up for a blockbuster sales push.

Without Apple's contribution, the S&P 500 would have had a much worse day.

Eight of the 10 largest market cap moves on that index today were printed in red ink, including a 7.4% price drop for Tesla (TSLA 7.35%) and a 5.8% retreat in Micron Technology (MU 5.68%) prices.

Tesla's June vehicle deliveries came in 18% above analyst estimates, but some investors are locking in profits after a 13% bull run over the last four market days. Micron is also trading near all-time highs, and memory chipmakers are facing a price-fixing lawsuit regarding older memory types.

These moves also weighed on the Nasdaq Composite, but neither Tesla nor Micron is a component of the Dow.

Image source: Getty Images.

The June jobs report landed with a thud: 57,000 new positions versus the 110,000 economists expected. May's numbers were revised down, too. Yet the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.3%, a contradiction explained by fewer people actively looking for work. Treasury yields declined on expectations that the soft data would reduce pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Over in the Strait of Hormuz, the vessel backlog dropped to 380 ships from 485 earlier this week, but only five ships actually passed through in the last 24 hours. U.S. and Iranian negotiators wrapped up talks in Doha claiming "positive progress," though concrete results remain elusive. The next round of discussions will follow funeral processions for Iran's late Supreme Leader, scheduled to end on July 9.

Oil prices keep falling anyway, apparently more interested in diplomatic optimism than shipping data.

Gold and Bitcoin both rallied for the second straight day, showing an unusual market shift into different types of safe-haven investments.

The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD +2.04%) fund rose 2.1% while the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT +2.44%) gained 2.6%. When investors buy both the traditional haven and the newfangled digital one at the same time, it sends broad uncertainty signals for the market as a whole.

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A long weekend to reassess Markets are closed on Friday for Independence Day, so everyone gets a long weekend to plan for what's ahead. As usual, the economy is sending mixed messages and the best move may very well be to do nothing.

The chip sector's two-day decline follows an 82% first-half gain; some pullback was inevitable, though the speed of the correction is surprising.

The Dow beating the Nasdaq by 1.5 percentage points reflects the rotation theme that's defined this year's market. Money is shifting from high-flying growth names into steadier sectors like financials and industrials. Sometimes boring outperforms exciting, at least for a few days.

Enjoy the holiday, and I'll see you again next week!

Micron Technology (MU 5.68%) investors have been a happy bunch in the market this past year. It's not a secret why: The stock is up 272% since 2026 began. Many investors wait decades before seeing 3x or greater returns, yet Micron did it in just six months.

With a return like that in such a short time, some investors may wonder if Micron's best days are already accounted for. But Micron's management team just told investors that the good times will keep rolling. If they're right, then Micron's run could just be getting started.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Micron expects market conditions to continue Micron makes dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND memory. Both are heavily used in data centers, and with an unprecedented data center build-out underway, Micron and its peers don't have the production capacity necessary to meet demand. With limited supply and soaring demand, memory chip prices are skyrocketing, driving strong results for Micron.

It recently released third-quarter results for fiscal 2026 (ending May 28), and some incredible news came out of that report.

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First, the company blew away internal expectations. For the quarter, management expected about $33.5 billion in revenue. Micron actually managed a jaw-dropping $41.5 billion in revenue. Management expects fourth-quarter revenue to come in at $50 billion. That's massive sequential growth and shows how strong the demand for memory chips is.

To be clear, there is growing concern that Micron might be in a bubble, and that new capacity coming online to meet huge demand could pop it. Micron downplayed that concern, as it expects "tight conditions" to persist beyond 2027 due to strong AI demand. This means that Micron could just be getting started, and Wall Street analysts' projections also back this up.

For Q4, analysts expect 315% year-over-year revenue growth. For fiscal 2027, they expect 82% revenue growth. Clearly, Micron's growth trend is far from over, yet the stock trades for 15.6 times forward earnings and 7.7 times next year's earnings.

Data by YCharts.

This suggests not all of the upside has been priced into Micron's stock quite yet, and it could easily head higher from here. Micron still looks to be a great investment. Just be aware that it will also involve increased volatility, as Micron stock has been known to give investors whiplash. Long-term and patient investors can get a nice return by purchasing Micron stock today, as there is more room to run as long as the AI build-out continues to go at full strength.

Keithen Drury has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

On June 30, Jim Cramer told Mad Money viewers his favorite stock is a company most people wrote off two years ago. “Intel, currently my favorite stock. CEO Lip-Bu Tan has turned this company around,” he said. He dismissed the mega-cap AI hyperscalers in favor of the chipmaker they all now depend on. The pick reflects a broader thesis he laid out the same night: “Wall street is now rewarding tech companies with products in high demand and punishing their customers.”

Why Cramer flipped on Intel Intel (NASDAQ:INTC | INTC Price Prediction) has become the loudest turnaround story in semis. The stock is up 278.4% year to date and 523.35% over the past year. A $22 broken-tech name has become something Cramer describes as a national treasure. CEO Lip-Bu Tan took over when the stock was near $20 and has since delivered six consecutive quarters of revenue above expectations.

The Q1 fiscal 2026 print, released April 23, 2026, showed the acceleration. Revenue came in at $13.577 billion, up 7.2% year over year. The Data Center and AI segment grew 22% year over year to $5.052 billion, and Intel Foundry revenue rose 16% to $5.421 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.29 blew past the $0.0127 consensus. Details in the Q1 8-K spell out the mechanics.

Three growth engines Cramer wants you to see Cramer laid out three legs to the Intel story. First, CPUs remain essential for AI inference, and Tan himself said “The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic. This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings.” Second is advanced packaging and automotive, where margins run hot.

Third is the foundry, which is finally moving. Intel 18A ramped to high-volume manufacturing in Arizona and Oregon, and Intel Xeon 6 was selected as host CPU for NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) DGX Rubin NVL8 systems. Moreover, add the $5 billion NVIDIA equity investment and the $5.7 billion CHIPS Act disbursement, and the balance sheet looks nothing like the one investors were panicking about a year ago.

Furthermore, insider behavior lines up with the narrative. CFO David Zinsner acquired 37,015 shares of common stock on June 1, 2026, and the endpoint counted 47 recent insider transactions with a net buying direction.

The memory boom Cramer is riding alongside Cramer’s Intel pick sits inside a larger frame he keeps repeating: “The spend can only be defended by profitability, not press release.” That is why memory suppliers are getting retail flows. Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) reported fiscal Q3 revenue of $41.456 billion, up 345.7% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $25.11 and gross margin at 84.6%. Guidance for the following quarter calls for $50 billion in revenue. The stock is up 304.62% year to date.

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) has rallied even harder, up 857.84% year to date on datacenter revenue up 645% year over year. Cramer’s line about memory names tripling in three months tracks with the tape.

The customers are taking the punishment The flip side of Cramer’s thesis lives in the compute chipmakers. Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL), which Jensen Huang has flagged as a potential trillion-dollar company, is up 250.96% year to date on custom-silicon tailwinds. AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) sits up 171.25% year to date, with Lisa Su leaning into the Meta deal for up to 6 gigawatts of Instinct GPUs. Both are winning and volatile, and Cramer warns they could get repriced if hyperscaler capex slows without earnings to justify it.

Intel’s path forward runs through shipping 18A wafers, landing more Xeon sockets in Rubin racks, and keeping foundry losses shrinking. Cramer thinks Tan is doing exactly that. At a forward multiple of 152x and an analyst target of $98.50 against a current price near $127.92, the question is how much of the comeback is already in the tape.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed that Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) invested $250 million in the Trump Accounts, also known as 530A Accounts.

In a post through this Truth Social account on July 2, President Trump reiterated his support for Micron following its investments in American children. Trump maintained bullish sentiment for MU stock following the announcement.

“Micron, a GREAT American Company, announced that they are putting in 250 Million Dollars into the Trump Accounts for the future benefit of children, and their stock went up 9 points today,” Trump noted.

Notably, the company unveiled an employee-matching benefit for contributions of up to $1,000 per child under 18. Additionally, the company announced it would provide a community benefit: a one-time $250 seed deposit for children with Trump Accounts where it operates, including Idaho, New York, Virginia, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas.

“As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, this investment is about helping children build a strong foundation for future opportunity while supporting the workforce and communities that will shape U.S. semiconductor leadership,” Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron Chairman, President and CEO, stated.

The Trump Accounts were established under the Working Families Tax Cuts in 2025, which provided that any child born in the U.S. between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, receives $1,000 from the government.

Micron stock performance amid Trump’s support Although the company received renewed support from President Trump, its stock market continues to fall. Over the past five days, Micron Technology shares dropped over 20%, trading at about $985.50 at press time.

MU stock 5-day chart. Source: Finbold As such, Micron stock valuation declined to approximately $1.2 trillion at the time of reporting. Nevertheless, Micron Technology shares have rallied by more than 690% over the past 12 months, driven by the AI (Artificial Intelligence) boom.

The Micron stock valuation has declined over the past few weeks, especially after Mehrotra sold shares, as Finbold reported. Nonetheless, Wall Street analysts remain bullish on Micron stock, as Finbold highlighted, amid strong support from President Trump.

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Micron Technology MU shares extended their recent decline on Thursday, falling 4% after tumbling 10% in the previous session, as broader weakness across technology stocks continued to weigh on semiconductor names.

The latest decline came despite public praise from President Donald Trump and a bullish outlook from Mizuho Securities, highlighting how investors remained focused on the broader selloff in high-growth technology stocks.

Micron shares have still posted exceptional gains this year, rising 219% in 2026 despite the recent pullback.

Earlier this week, Micron announced a $250 million investment in Trump Accounts, tax-advantaged savings accounts for children under the age of 18.

Under the program, children born between 2025 and 2028 will receive a $1,000 deposit from the US Treasury Department.

Following the announcement, President Donald Trump praised the company in a post on Truth Social.

"Micron, a truly GREAT American Company, and one of the 'HOTTEST' anywhere in the World, has announced a HISTORIC $250 MILLION Investment in TRUMP ACCOUNTS," Trump wrote.

Despite the endorsement, Micron shares continued to decline as investors rotated out of semiconductor stocks.

The weakness was part of a broader technology selloff that has affected many of the year's strongest performers.

The pressure on Micron coincided with a sharp decline in South Korea's stock market, where technology shares led losses.

South Korea's KOSPI index dropped 7.9% on Thursday as the technology selloff spread beyond US markets.

Major memory chip manufacturers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, two of Micron's largest competitors, declined 14.6% and 9.1%, respectively.

Although the selloff has been significant, both Micron and the broader South Korean market have delivered strong gains this year.

The KOSPI remains up 81% in 2026, compared with a 9.3% gain for the S&P 500 over the same period.

Mizuho maintains bullish long-term outlookDespite the recent volatility, Mizuho Securities continues to view Micron as its preferred investment among leading semiconductor companies.

Mizuho Securities put out its top picks for July on Thursday which featured Robinhood and Oracle.

Analyst Vijay Rakesh maintained an Outperform rating on the stock with a price target of $1,375.

According to Mizuho, Micron delivered its strongest quarterly stock performance on record during the second quarter, with shares gaining 242%, even though the stock declined following its third-quarter earnings report.

Rakesh said demand for memory products is expected to remain strong through 2027, supported by continued investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

"We see MU and other key memory suppliers all seeing strong near-term tailwinds, driven mostly by AI demand," Rakesh wrote.

He also said Micron is expected to remain a "key winner" in the memory semiconductor industry.

The recent pullback underscores the volatility surrounding semiconductor stocks after a powerful rally earlier this year.

While investors have taken profits across the technology sector, analysts continue to point to long-term demand for AI-related memory products as a supportive factor for Micron's business outlook.

July 2, 2026 Wednesday's MarketsS&P 500
7,483 (-0.22%)Nasdaq
26,040 (-0.66%)Dow
52,305 (-0.03%)Bitcoin
$59,942 (+2.3%) With markets closed Friday for Independence Day (observed), instead of a regular edition of Breakfast News tomorrow, we'll email you a special send: The Quarter in Charts.

Source: Image created by Jester AI.

1. Chip Sell-Off Drags Tech Stocks Into Third Quarter Tech stocks opened the third quarter under pressure as a chip-led sell-off hit Wall Street Wednesday and spread into Asian markets Thursday. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 6.3% as chipmakers led U.S. declines, with Nasdaq futures down a further 0.5% in early trade.

Micron (MU +1.78%) ended Wednesday down 10%: South Korea's Kospi fell over 7% Thursday, with SK Hynix down 14.5% and Samsung Electronics off by 9%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq just registered their best quarter since 2020: Reuters said lofty valuations and heavy AI spending remained a concern for some market participants. Investors are now looking to today's U.S. monthly jobs report for clues on the rate outlook after a strong second quarter for semiconductors. 2. Sell-Offs Are the Toll, Not the Trap Market sell-offs are completely, boringly normal.

They are, in fact, a feature – the cover charge you pay for the long-term returns that stocks have handed out for a century. Depending on how you count, the S&P 500 has tumbled into a bear market (a drop of 20% or more) somewhere between 13 and 27 times since 1928 ... Every single one felt, in the moment, like the one that would finally break the machine. And every single one is now a line item in a history book, dwarfed by the recovery that followed.

So, what's a Fool to do when the screen turns red and the headlines turn breathless? Probably less than you think. The villain changes every time – a pandemic, an oil shock, a bank collapse, a rate-hike cycle, a bursting bubble, a headline you'll have forgotten in five years. The ending rarely does.

Sell-offs are the toll, not the trap: Over every 20-year stretch in its history, the S&P 500 has never lost money. The market has survived a depression, stagflation, a financial crisis, a global pandemic, and more than one genuinely apocalyptic bubble – and made patient owners richer through all of it.

3. Amazon's End-to-End Silicon Plans

Amazon (AMZN +0.57%) – recommended by both Team Hidden Gems and Team Rule Breakers – is designing its own chips for its key consumer devices, head of devices and services Panos Panay said in an interview on CNBC's "The Tech Download" podcast. Asked about possible future products, he spoke of a "whole roadmap of on-the-go devices" to be worn and used interactively – telling us we won't have to wait long for something from Amazon.

"On some of the more critical devices right now, our focus is end-to-end silicon": While Panay said the company does use chips from other makers, including Qualcomm (QCOM 0.27%), he told the interview that Amazon's own silicon is used in products including the Echo Show 8, Echo Show 11, and Fire TV. "Amazon seems to want to do it all. More often than not, whatever it does, the company does well": Fool contributing analyst Toby Bordelon spoke of the all-around package and the strength of Amazon's business.

4. SpaceX Isn't the Only Summer IPO...

Bending Spoons (BSP 7.41%) – the Italian tech company that owns the AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo brands – made its market debut yesterday at an initial valuation of over $18 billion – and soared approximately 40% from its $29 offer price to close a few cents short of $40.

"Like private equity had a baby withGoogle": CEO Luca Ferrari told Bloomberg of the company's ambition to make it as an emerging tech conglomerate – with over 1,000 digital businesses on its list of potential takeover targets. "It's the right moment because we have been building this business ... we continue to grow our top line, very healthy 29% top line growth in 2025": CEO Wayne Ting of e-bike and e-scooter rental company Lime told Yahoo Finance, "I do think the macro IPO market improving is a good tailwind," after parent Neutron (LIME 0.58%) had a lower-profile IPO the same day to reach a market cap of approximately $1.63 billion.

5. Most Retail Investors Have Never Heard of SEC Proposal That Would Cut Financial Information in Half

The Motley Fool surveyed 2,000 individual investors in June 2026 on the SEC's proposed Semiannual Reporting rule, open for public comment through Monday, July 6.

Read the full (free) report here

6. Today's Take: The View From the Top

When the market continuously sets new highs, speculative capital often pushes mediocre companies to expensive valuations, which makes a disciplined mindset more critical than ever.-- Rachel Warren Team Hidden Gems

While a market that keeps making new highs doesn't change my mindset, it does change my behavior. I'm willing to take some reasonably big risks if the payoff far outstrips the chance of irreversible loss. When markets start pricing some areas like wild success is a foregone conclusion, I look elsewhere.-- Karl Thiel Team Rule Breakers

7. Your Take Are you sitting on cash waiting for opportunities, or are you fully invested heading into the new month? What would need to happen for you to change your positioning – what's your trigger to deploy cash or take some off the table?

Discuss with friends and family, or become a member to hear what your fellow Fools are saying!

This image and article was created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Micron Technology, and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

© Sushitsky Sergey / Shutterstock.com

The story rippling through memory stocks this week began on CNBC’s Fast Money on June 29, where the panel dug into a report that Apple is trying to source memory chips from Chinese manufacturer CXMT. The company Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) wants to buy from is not yet on the US entity list, unlike YMTC, which already is.

For Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), whose Mobile and Client segment just did $11.521 billion in a single quarter, that is a shot across the bow.

An Apple exit would blow through Micron’s mobile book Micron’s fiscal Q3 2026 revenue landed at $41.456 billion, up 345.7% year over year, non-GAAP EPS at $25.11, and GAAP gross margin at 84.6% against 37.7% a year earlier. Guidance was, if anything, more startling. $50 billion in revenue and $31 in EPS for the next quarter. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called out “multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements” that he said would make the earnings stream more durable, and the numbers, per the Q3 8-K press release, do back him up.

Now imagine Apple, the world’s most powerful buyer of LPDDR5X mobile memory, quietly pointing a slug of that demand at a Chinese fab that undercuts everyone on price. Apple sits on a $4.31 trillion market cap and, according to Tim Cook, is fighting through what he called a “100-year flood” in memory pricing. Cheaper Chinese chips solve his margin problem. They also punch a hole in Micron’s most consumer-exposed segment.

The cycle Carter Worth is worried about On the CNBC panel, Christina Partsinevelos made the counter-case that Micron’s real growth engine is high-bandwidth memory for AI training, which dwarfs iPhone DRAM in both dollar terms and margin. She noted that “just 3 years ago, Micron was losing money on every chip,” and now “gross margins are well above 80%.” That gap is the whole problem. Margins that fat are an invitation for every competitor with a fab to add capacity, and the host warned that “you could see this collapse and prices take effect way before supply hits the market.”

Carter Worth’s chart-based read was blunter. He flagged “4 instances since March where it’s dropped 20% within a 2-3 day period” and recommended trimming. Micron’s own tape agrees: shares are up 838.82% over the past year and were down 9.67% today alone. Polymarket’s most-traded contract for this week now shows a 50.5% probability of MU touching $1,020 and a 50% shot at $990, which is the crowd pricing in exactly the two-day flush Worth described.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Apple didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

The CHIPS Act was built to prevent this exact deal Samsung and SK Hynix already control 60% of the memory market and are bringing capacity online at scale. SK Hynix lists in the US on July 10, with proceeds potentially funding China expansion. Micron’s answer, the fab in Clay, New York first announced in 2022, won’t be ready until 2030. That is the awkward part.

The $52 billion CHIPS Act was designed to keep advanced memory production onshore, and Apple sourcing from a Chinese supplier that has not yet been sanctioned undermines the whole premise. Once a customer of Apple’s scale qualifies CXMT, unwinding that relationship in any future entity-list expansion becomes a years-long problem.

What it means for the storage complex The read-through touches NAND, too. SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) has ridden the same wave, up 857.84% year to date on datacenter NAND pricing, and Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) is up 271.05% YTD on HDD demand for AI training data. Both fell hard today alongside Micron. The AI thesis still holds. What shifted today is the market’s assumption that memory pricing has a floor Chinese supply cannot reach.

If Worth is right that Micron’s normalized gross margin looks a lot more like 29% than 84%, the cycle turns regardless. The live question is whether an Apple-CXMT handshake pulls that turn forward by a year.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Apple didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

The world's hottest stock index tumbled Thursday as the tech selloff that ravaged U.S. markets spread overseas.

Micron (NASDAQ: MU) stock saw its biggest insider trade of 2026 when, on June 26, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra sold 4,000 MU shares, raising a total of just over $46 million.

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This signal is triggered upon the reporting of the trade to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Additionally, the sale featured so many individual, smaller components that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) limitation of up to 30 ‘line-items’ means that it required two FORM 4 documents.

Thus, the first filing shows that the CEO dumped 28,506 Micron shares at an average price of $1,149 for a total of $32.76 million. The second document reveals that an additional 11,494 MU shares were sold at a slightly higher average price of $1,181, raising a total of $13.57 million.

Notably, while CEO Mehrotra is the company’s most prolific insider trader, the sales executed on June 26 and reported on June 30 eclipse all his previous activity in 2026. 

Indeed, he made two stock dumps in May – worth roughly $21 million toward the beginning and $38.5 million toward the end of the month – and his other most recent selling was done as far back at November 2025 and raised a total of $3 million.

Receive Signals on SEC-verified Insider Stock Trades

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This signal is triggered upon the reporting of the trade to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

What is next for Micron stock in 2026? Elsewhere, at least part of the rise in the size of insider trades can be linked directly to Micron stock’s performance in 2026. Specifically, after starting the year at $315.42and stagnating during the first quarter (Q1), MU experienced a rapid Q2 upsurge.

Indeed, the memory giant ended the most recent session – July 1 – at $1,032.28 for a 227.27% rally from the January 2 closing price. 

Micron stock price YTD chart. Source: Google Still, the success has suddenly come under threat in the most recent 24 hours due to the implied bearish signal coming from Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META). 

In a nutshell, Mark Zuckerberg’s company joined SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) in offering some of its artificial intelligence (AI) data center capacity to other businesses. 

Though the move could help Meta raise additional cash and offset some of its rising expenditure, it implies that despite data center construction severely lagging relative to the initial announcements – at least as far as can be judged from publicly available information – there exists a gap between supply and demand.

Much of Micron stock’s Q2 rally was driven by the AI boom narrative and the company’s decision to abandon the consumer market in favor of ‘hyperscalers.’

Featured image via Shutterstock

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In this video, I will answer the question of whether it is too late to buy Micron (MU 10.13%) stock.

Kurv Investment Management's Howard Chan talks about his firm's KMEM ETF and how it offers investors exposure to global AI memory businesses. He then talks about memory's role in AI infrastructure by highlighting chipmakers Micron (MU), Samsung and SK Hynix.

Momentum for leading artificial intelligence (AI) chip stocks has been incredibly bullish over the last year, and Micron Technology (MU 9.76%) has been one of the best-performing names in the category. Soaring demand for its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and other solutions has translated into stellar growth in unit sales that has pushed revenue higher, and increased pricing power has also lifted sales and driven big gains in profit margins.

Thanks to big gains in sales and earnings, Micron stock has been one of the market's biggest overall winners over the last year -- and it now has a market capitalization of roughly $1.29 trillion, ranking it as the world's 13th-largest publicly traded company. Read on for a look at what a $1,500 investment in the stock made one year ago would be worth at today's prices.

Image source: Getty Images.

Buying Micron stock a year ago would have been a great move As of this writing, Micron stock is up 820% over the last year of trading. That means that if you had invested $1,500 in the stock one year ago today and held on to your position, it would now be worth more than $13,800.

AI-related demand for memory chips has transformed the company's business, and the need for these chips was actually so strong that it caused the company to move out of providing memory solutions for the consumer market so that it could focus more of its design and production capacity on the far more profitable high-end, enterprise artificial intelligence market. The move has been paying off for the company in a big way, and it's possible that the supply-constrained environment for memory chips will allow the business to continue posting stellar sales and earnings growth, translating into more big wins for shareholders.

Keith Noonan has positions in Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.