SanDisk

SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) makes NAND flash — not the DRAM or HBM that Micron and the Korean makers sell into the AI crunch — and has been an independent stock for twenty months. Western Digital announced a split in October 2023 after a planned merger with its Kioxia joint-venture partner collapsed; the flash half listed as SanDisk Corp on 2025-02-24, closing its first session at $48.60. Like Micron, it sits in our second-order tier, selling a different product into the same story.

Situational Awareness LP’s 13F, filed 2026-05-18 for the quarter ended 2026-03-31, reported SanDisk shares worth $724.36 million, its second-largest long stock position. Its next filing, for the quarter ended 2026-06-30 and filed 2026-08-14, reported 2,495,344 SanDisk shares worth $5.67 billion, its largest line and 28.1% of a $20.17 billion long book; Micron, now held as shares, was second at $5.57 billion.

Update, 30 October 2026. SanDisk reported its quarter to 2 October on the evening of 29 October, the same night as Intel. Its earnings release gave revenue of $11.03 billion, up 23% on the quarter before and above its own guide of $10.30–10.80 billion. Data-centre revenue rose 61%, to $4.80 billion from $2.98 billion. Non-GAAP gross margin was 85.1%. The one line that shrank was consumer: $397 million, down 29% on the quarter and 39% on the year; the release does not say why. Intel gave the buyer’s side that night: PC unit sales down about 12% in 2026 and about 10% in 2027, and no lasting recovery until memory supply improves and prices ease. Its 10-Q blames weaker client demand on “higher component prices, particularly memory.” The price memory makers are paid is the volume PC makers lose; The PC pays the memory bill lays out the trail. SNDK fell after hours on 29 October and traded about 13% lower on 30 October, a day when most chip stocks fell and Kioxia, its flash partner, forecast profit below estimates. The price cannot tell the three reports apart.

SanDisk does not make the memory the AI trade is short of, and it trades as if it does. Across SanDisk’s full trading history — 360 sessions, 2025-02-24 through 2026-07-31 — the Pearson correlation between its daily returns and Micron’s is 0.75. Across the 28 sessions of the Korean memory selloff and reversal alone, 2026-06-22 through 2026-07-31, it rises to 0.92. Twenty-eight sessions show the link tightening under stress, not that it changed for good.

SanDisk bottomed at $29.62 on 2025-04-22, then closed 2025 up more than 560%, the S&P 500’s top performer. Sherwood News credited the run to SanDisk’s cost advantage from its Kioxia joint venture, which the two extended to 2034 on 2026-02-01. Revenue rose 61% in the January quarter, to $3.03 billion, and 251% in the April quarter, to $5.95 billion — though that report flagged a consumer-revenue miss and a shift to “multiyear customer engagements,” Micron’s contract language.

Micron and SanDisk led a selloff on 2026-06-23, each down 13%+; two days later SanDisk set an all-time closing high of $2,335.00. The real break came in July: a broad selloff on 2026-07-16 left SNDK down 12.63%, and the close fell to $1,015.89 by 2026-07-29 — 56.5% below the June high. That low sat inside a Korean selloff: SK Hynix fell 15%+ on 2026-07-13, days after its Nasdaq debut, then SK Hynix and Samsung surged 20%+ in Seoul on 2026-07-31, hours after SanDisk rallied 26.0%, from $1,015.89 to $1,279.96.

78 hyperedges touch SanDisk in TEXXR’s corpus, queried 27 October, against Micron’s 348; TEXXR files 26 more, the earnings among them, under a separate “Sandisk” spelling. Most of the 78 are old: 48 date from 2006 to 2015, ending with Western Digital’s agreement to buy SanDisk; one follows in 2019 and one in 2025. The graph went nearly dark for the nine years SanDisk was a subsidiary. Its restart coincides with a change in TEXXR’s edge extraction at the turn of 2026, but article counts, which that change did not touch, agree: four tagged articles from 2016 through 2025, then 27 in the first three quarters of 2026.

Of the 29 edges since 2025, 11 are bare price moves. The rest are structural: the Kioxia JV extension, and a January 2026 report that Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate would add capacity cautiously, mindful of past downcycles.

Positioning: how much of SNDK is sold short, on the record brokers file twice a month. It lags by design — read it as where the crowd stood, not where it stands.

• The eight-for-one split, 19–20 November. Holders of record on 9 November get seven more shares for each one held, issued after the close on 19 November; the stock trades on a split basis from the open on 20 November, per the 8-K. Every per-share figure on this page is pre-split.
• The second-quarter guide, $12.2–12.6 billion. Whether data centre keeps growing while consumer shrinks.
• Whether the correlation holds. Over the 60 sessions from August to 26 October it ran at 0.83, between the full-history 0.75 and the Korean window’s 0.92.
• Capacity caution. Whether Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate keep adding capacity slowly after the July drawdown.

SanDisk lives or dies by the same constraint as these names — small equal-weighted groups, one constraint each. Not investment products: see all categories.