The Apple & SanDisk Takeover
What a week. I blinked, and the QQQ's are now up nearly 15% year-to-date.
Let's get into the fun stuff starting with two of the most dominant forces in tech stocks:
1. Apple Is Winning Big in AI
Wedbush's Dan Ives just raised his Apple (AAPL) target price to $400, saying “we estimate roughly 20% of the world's population will access AI through an Apple device over the coming years.”
And presumably, AI will be a major topic at the June WWDC conference.
Now, have I been reading Dan Ives? Or has Dan Ives been reading me?
I've been saying for months that you can put any AI app on your iPhone or iPad or Mac or whatever.
And I've never met a real live human being even considering switching to Android because of some alleged AI advantage.
Plus, Apple has a massive Mac Mini shortage because they are selling like crazy to users of local AI models like OpenClaw.
So Apple is still operating at genius level in AI.
They are not blowing all their cash flow building expensive data centers and LLM models.
And they get to ride the wave through their superior hardware devices and app store.
2. SanDisk Broke My Heart
I've held onto all my Apple shares, but sold my SanDisk (SNDK) like a fool about a month ago.
There is nothing worse than selling a stock and watching it double in a couple of weeks.
I should have listened to JR Romero on this one.
SanDisk is the #1 stock in the S&P 500 with a 532% gain. Intel (INTC) is #2 at +240%.
This continues the theme of 1990's tech darlings dominating the market in 2026:
Even Ciena (CIEN) and Dell (DELL) are in there!
The funny thing is, SanDisk might still be cheap! Even after this wild run, it's trading at 9.5X forward earnings!
This is because earnings estimates have risen so fast.
There is still a major flash memory shortage, so SanDisk gets to charge whatever it wants.
I had a funny feeling that Sandisk and the rest of the storage/memory complex (SNDK, STX, MU, WDC, etc) would top out around the launch of the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM).
DRAM's top holdings include SK Hynix, Micron (MU), Samsung, Kioxia Holdings, and SanDisk:
But I was wrong.
DRAM has almost doubled since its April 2 launch:
Shows how valuable my instincts are…
3. Earnings Season Has Been Unbelievable
Q1 earnings season was a blockbuster.
According to FactSet, 84% of reporting S&P 500 companies beat EPS estimates, easily beating long-term averages.
And total earnings have been 18.2% above estimates, more than double the 10-year average of 7.1%.
So as of now, with 89% of companies having reported, earnings growth is trending at 27.7%, the highest since Q1 2021.
That's more than double the 13.1% expected on March 31.
Some of the bigger earnings winners include Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN), SanDisk (SNDK), GE Vernova (GEV), and Intel (INTC).
4. SpaceX Is Here, Sort of
Traders are hot for the SpaceX IPO.
They're showing it by bidding up fellow Elon Musk brainchild Tesla (TSLA), plus space exploration names like Rocket Lab (RKLB) and Intuitive Machines (LUNR).
Tesla is up 25% over the past month, with any other space names surging as well:
And now the rumor mills are active, with some folks believing that SpaceX and Tesla will merge.
(Note: XAiI is now part of SpaceX, and the entity is called SpaceXAI, but I'm calling it SpaceX here because that's what most people say.
In other Tesla news, the company is recalling its lower-priced Cybertruck. Because the wheels might fall off.
But hey, at least the stock's looking secure.
5. Sentiment Stagnates
Markets are hitting record highs, but sentiment is not.
The AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 38.3% of investors are bullish, basically unchanged from last week.
This is inline with the long-term average of 37.5%.
Meanwhile, CNN's Fear & Greed Index is at 68. Yes, that counts as greed, but it's nothing dramatic.
So investors are not all-in on this market.
As we said last week, this type of sentiment reading is great for the market because it implies there is money on the sidelines.
Markets often (but not always) top on euphoric sentiment.
We're not even close to that.
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