Soft U.S. wholesale inflation data triggered a broad equity rally on Friday, with semiconductor and memory-chip stocks leading the advance. The July producer price index was flat month-over-month, below the 0.2% increase economists had forecast, and the reading pulled down the probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike in September. The S&P 500 closed at a record near 7,799, while the Nasdaq gained 0.8%.
SanDisk was the standout, surging 13.7% immediately after the inflation data and adding about 6% on Friday for its fifth consecutive daily gain. The move brought its weekly advance to roughly 34% after an investor day on Thursday where management outlined ambitious long-term targets tied to AI-driven NAND flash demand.
JPMorgan resumed coverage with an Overweight rating and a $2,250 price target, implying about 47% upside from the prior close. Analyst Harlan Sur said SanDisk is uniquely positioned to capture a structural inflection in NAND demand driven by AI inference. SanDisk projects the NAND flash market will expand to $300 billion this year and approach $500 billion in 2027, up sharply from an estimated $70 billion in 2025. Citi Research maintained a Buy rating with a $2,100 target, highlighting AI data centers as the company’s primary growth engine and pointing to key-value caching as a new source of long-term demand. RBC Capital raised its target to $1,600 from $1,300, while Wedbush maintained a $2,000 target.
Micron shares added 4.2% on the inflation news. The company is one of three global manufacturers capable of producing DRAM and NAND at scale, and its future growth is closely tied to high-bandwidth memory used alongside advanced GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. Management projects constrained supply conditions for both DRAM and NAND well beyond 2026.
Marvell Technology rose 3.6%, supported by its custom silicon and optical interconnect business for major cloud operators. Its expanded relationship with Nvidia, including capital investment and integration of NVLink Fusion technology, reinforced its role in AI infrastructure buildouts. Marvell joined the S&P 500 in June 2026, creating passive fund demand.
