Micron’s blowout earnings sent the stock soaring Thursday, but the bigger market message showed up in Apple’s share price.
Investors are rewarding Micron (MU) for a global memory squeeze that has pushed pricing power back to suppliers. Apple (AAPL), down over 5% after raising prices on some Macs and iPads, is showing the other side of that squeeze.
Apple is back below where its May breakout began. The stock has fallen into the upper end of its old range, putting the $275 to $280 area back in focus. That zone is now the line between a bruising one-day price shock and a failed multi-week breakout.
The trigger was simple. Apple raised prices on some MacBooks and iPads amid the global memory crisis, with increases running from $100 to $300 on some devices. While the move was somewhat expected, the size of the price increases was not. iPhone prices were left unchanged for now.
Micron just showed why that cost pressure is not going away quietly.
Micron topped Wall Street’s estimates, posted record revenue, and delivered a record gross margin of 84.9%. The company expects that figure to rise to about 86% this quarter.
For a memory business known for violent boom-and-bust swings, those margins say customers are still paying up. While that’s great for Micron, it’s harder for companies buying the chips.
Micron has added more than $100 billion in market value Thursday even after giving back part of its early surge. Apple has erased nearly $200 billion.
That tension lands in a rough tape for the biggest tech stocks. The Magnificent Seven are down about 2%, sliding to a two-month low after a month in which megacap AI winners had already lost trillions in market value.
Micron’s earnings didn’t create Apple’s problem. They made it harder to ignore. Apple’s price hikes show that the cost side of the AI build-out is starting to move from spreadsheets into product pages.
For investors, the next test is Apple’s $275 to $280 zone.
A close above it would make Thursday look like a successful test of old price supply. A close below $275 would turn the May breakout into a bull trap and force investors to reassess how much of the AI hardware bill megacaps can keep absorbing.
Jared Blikre is the global markets and data editor for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @SPYJared or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: finance.yahoo.com
