저자: JimCramer · 외국인
요약 보기
증시 하락(다우 -507p, S&P -1.2%, 나스닥 -1.35%) 속에서도 메모리·스토리지 반도체(마이크론, 웨스턴디지털, 샌디스크)와 반도체 장비(KLA, 램리서치, 어플라이드머티리얼즈) 등 하이퍼스케일러가 아닌 기술주가 강세임을 강조. 마이크론 266%, SK하이닉스 287%, 샌디스크 725% 상승 등 DRAM 부족이 원인이라 주장. 장기 공급 계약과 AI 수요 지속(2030년까지)을 근거로 메모리의 밸류에이션 재평가를 주장. 미국 장기금리는 하락했고 인플레이션 기대도 낮아졌다고 해석하며, 연준 신임 의장의 물가안정 중시 태도를 긍정적으로 평가.
다듬은 글
Fresh. The leading stocks that seem to have no ceiling belong to technology companies, but not the ones we are used to . Not to well-known companies, but definitely not to hyperscalers, those giants that made up Fang and the Magnificent Seven. These stocks hardly move, and often when they do, you know what?
They fall. Recently, technology company leaders have been much less visible, and many of them are not included in the averages. So when I tell you that the Dow is down 507 points, the S&P is down 1.2%, the Nasdaq is down 1.35%. House of pain. Largely due to the sarcastic statements of the new Fed chairman at today's press conference, you see, we are missing something important.
By the way, I could talk all day about whether we're going to get a Fed rate hike, you know, or stay the same . But you know what I would rather do? I would like to try to help you make some money. I think that's more important. Anyway, I'll tell you about stocks that have worked even today, that are used in the technology sector, but are not hyperscalers.
Certainly not Microsoft. Semiconductors and their friends are benefiting from the impressive deficit. Stocks such as Micron, which reports on the 24th, Seagate, Western Digital, Sandisk. These companies make semiconductors for memory and storage that are less complex than anything coming out of Nvidia.
But these companies can't produce them fast enough. They keep raising prices one after another, and they make many of the devices we use more expensive. Just tonight, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple will have to raise prices because of these memory chips. So their stock prices just keep rising . And the rest of us?
House of pain. Almost every day, an analyst who didn't come and catch up with these stocks raises his target prices for each of them. Then the next day the analyst should raise the price targets. Then the shares exceed the previous ones. Then another one appears, and it increases, increases, increases and increases.
And that's how these stocks are growing so much. It's a giant game of leapfrog. Targeted price increases are gigantic, even product prices are simply gradually increasing. Listen, I understand. That's how Micron grew by 266% this year. SK jumped 287%. Western Digital grew by 313%. Sandisk has 725%. This is a phenomenal increase due to DRAM shortages, the very things Apple is talking about.
The kind of memory chips that our data centers also desperately need. And there is another level. We have a shortage of commodity semiconductors because we also have a shortage of semiconductor capital equipment needed to produce commodity semiconductors. So, KLA increased by 96%. Lam Research grew by 119%.
Applied Materials grew by 131 %. We know from the wonderful Gary Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, that his company was able to secure long-term contracts for the first time, guaranteeing multiple increases in future profits. Finally, there is the supplier of computers and data center components, Dell, which grew by 230%, Marvell Tech by 241%, Arlo Holdings by 283%.
Oh boy, analysts are playing leapfrog in these daily reports. The main conclusion is simply to look at the reaction in the bond market. So, you saw a significant move up at the front end of the yield curve. Hmm, and this was even when the market had already priced in one rate hike by the end of the year.
So there was a further increase in yields , but I think the most interesting thing was the long end of the yield curve. The 30-year yield has actually declined. What does this mean? I think that means the market is saying from an inflation-fighting and confidence perspective that the Fed has that confidence.
Inflation expectations are declining. Five-year inflation expectations are actually lower than they were at the start of the war. And ultimately, that's actually good for bonds. No one in the bond market wants to talk about raising rates. But worse than the rate hike situation is a situation similar to the one in 2022 , when the Fed didn't just raise rates several times, but had to raise them significantly because they lagged behind the market rate and lost control of inflation.
The market says we are not losing control of inflation right now. This was not uncommon in the past. The Fed has eased rates and raised them many times because people said they shouldn't ease, and you know, that's not what you should do. You are here for price stability, and what you are doing is an attempt for a reason.
People who at the time believed that cutting rates frequently was bad point to long positions and see what happened to the longs. Long positions are increasing. So, I mean, sometimes I think it's even to be expected. It's very rare for the Fed to control long positions by moving short positions up or down, right?
I mean, you seemed weird seeing that. We've seen it over and over and over and over again , haven't we? This is true. It is not necessary to see the curve flattening. So, uh, yields move higher on the front end than on the long end when the Fed takes a more dovish stance. But, I think what's important is that in the run-up to this meeting, there were questions about what Vorsh would focus on ?
Will it be the president's agenda of lowering interest rates, or will it be the congressional agenda that Congress has set, which is price stability? And he made it clear that his focus above all else is on price stability . And the reaction you saw in the markets reflected this focus on price stability .
Does anyone know anything about Vorsh, I...I don't even know if he supports a dual mandate. He's always been completely dedicated to price stability, and you know, the guys he works with, and you know, he's been at Druckenmiller for as long as he's... I mean, there are a lot of people who think that , going back to Milton Friedman or somebody else, the only role of the central bank is price stability .
One of the interesting things he added was that Kelly mentioned Easter eggs. At the press conference, he avoided making predictions about the future. What if I told you that the biggest AI story today is n't actually about Nvidia? This is memory. For years, Wall Street treated memory companies as old-fashioned commodity businesses.
Now the same analyst who called memory acyclic says that times are different. Micron has joined the trillion dollar club. The price of memory continues to rise, and customers are signing contracts a year later. And the largest supplier Nvidia is saying something it has never said before. We have no idea when the demand will end.
Today we'll look at why Wall Street suddenly thinks demand for AI could last until 2030, and why Nvidia still looks surprisingly cheap. And why the next phase of AI could be even bigger than the first. The market made one mistake. And the fact that for decades, memory chips followed the same cycle. Demand grew, companies built more factories, while supplies shrank sharply and prices fell.
Profits were disappearing. That's why investors have always given memory companies very low valuation multiples. No one trusted the profits. Everyone expected another collapse. But AI has completely changed the equation. Today, memory doesn't store photos or save files. onents in every AI system. Without a huge amount of high-speed memory, the world's fastest GPUs simply can't function.
That's why analysts say memory has transformed from a commodity to a critical AI resource. Why Micron changed everything. Micron's latest earnings shocked Wall Street. Revenue exceeded expectations, and margins reached levels that few semiconductor companies have ever achieved. But, surprisingly, the biggest story wasn't income .
It wasn't a job. It wasn't even a landmark. The biggest surprise was the strategic agreement with customers. These deals appear to have locked customers into multi-year supply contracts. Instead of selling memory quarter after quarter, Micron is now securing demand for years to come. This has changed everything because investors no longer have to guess whether demand will disappear next quarter.
Customers themselves tell Micron: "We need your memory for years." That's why analysts now believe that memory deserves a much higher valuation than in the previous cycle. Why is memory still in short supply? This is what many analysts don't realize. Building a memory factory is not the same as opening another warehouse.
A modern semiconductor factory requires billions of dollars, thousands of engineers, state-of-the-art cleanrooms, and years before production even begins. Additionally, the high-speed memory used in artificial intelligence chips is even more complex to manufacture. Each block consumes significantly more wafers than traditional DRAM.
This means that even when companies build new factories, memory supply doesn't suddenly increase. Supply is growing slowly, while demand continues to grow. And that's why analysts expect the deficit to last for several more years.
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