Micron’s Record Run Runs Into Taiwan, China and Washington
Published on 07/17/2026 at 04:41 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Micron’s business is still firing on all cylinders, but the stock has become a magnet for every new worry in the memory market. On Thursday, shares fell about six percent to EUR 747.00, extending a seven-session slide to 12.91 percent. Even after that pullback, the stock is still up 665.06 percent over the past 12 months and 177.70 percent since the start of the year.
The latest pressure did not come from Micron’s own results. Instead, the catalyst was a broad selloff in chip names after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company lifted its 2026 revenue outlook to growth of more than 40 percent and increased its capital-spending plan to USD 60 billion to USD 64 billion, up from a previous upper limit of USD 56 billion. TSMC’s second-quarter profit jumped 77 percent from a year earlier, yet its own shares fell about four percent as investors focused on the heavier spending burden. The company also said its operating margin in the third quarter would be about 70 basis points below expectations, with overseas expansion costs and the move to 2-nanometer production expected to weigh on gross margin in the second half.
That reaction spilled into the wider semiconductor complex. ASML had already come under pressure a day earlier, and Micron was caught in the same downdraft. Some analysts argue the move looks exaggerated: many AI chips manufactured by TSMC rely on Micron’s HBM memory to function, so higher foundry investment should, in time, translate into more demand for Micron’s products rather than less.
Micron did have its own positive corporate news to offset the noise. The company recently signed long-term supply agreements in the automotive sector with Qualcomm, Visteon, HARMAN, JOYNEXT, DENSO, Astemo and Hyundai Mobis. Those contracts are meant to secure memory shipments for connected vehicles over multiple years, giving Micron and its customers greater visibility on volumes and pricing. In addition, the company said all of its HBM output for 2026 is already sold at fixed prices, underscoring how tight supply remains in high-bandwidth memory.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Micron?
Still, that strength is colliding with a fresh geopolitical concern. Media reports in mid-July suggested Washington is considering tighter export restrictions on HBM chips. For investors, that matters because HBM is a key component in AI accelerators, and any constraints on shipments could undercut one of Micron’s most important growth engines. The company says HBM4 production is ramping twice as fast as the previous HBM3e-12-High generation, and it expects strong demand to continue through 2027.
Micron’s latest quarterly figures show how powerful the underlying business has become. In the third fiscal quarter, which ended on May 28, it earned USD 25.11 per share on an adjusted basis, up from USD 1.91 a year earlier. Revenue rose from USD 9.30 billion to USD 41.46 billion. For the fourth fiscal quarter, management is guiding for about USD 50 billion in sales and adjusted earnings of roughly USD 31 per share, both new records by a wide margin.
The stock’s recent weakness also followed another sharp drop on the previous day, when Micron lost eight percent even as the S&P 500 added 0.4 percent. That move came after Chinese rival ChangXin Memory Technologies said it plans to raise fresh capital through a listing in Shanghai. The planned flotation implies a market value of USD 85.5 billion for CXMT, and in a cyclical memory industry that is enough to stir fears of future oversupply and price competition, especially in HBM.
Micron at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
For now, the chart is sending mixed signals. Micron trades 32.32 percent below its 52-week high from June 25, 2026, and 9.41 percent under its 50-day average of EUR 824.56. The annualized volatility stands at 105.99 percent, while the RSI is 40.9. Goldman Sachs has calculated that Micron accounted for about 51 percent of all S&P 500 earnings revisions in the most recently measured period, a reminder of how heavily one company can shape broader market expectations.
Investors will get another chance to hear from management on August 10, 2026, when Micron appears at the KeyBanc Capital Markets Technology Leadership Forum. That event is expected to shed more light on HBM4 yields and the status of international trade licenses. For now, the market is trying to balance record demand, automotive contracts and a fully sold-out HBM pipeline against export risk, a new Chinese funding push and the sector-wide chill from TSMC’s spending plan.
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