New York, January 7, 2026, 07:42 EST — Premarket
U.S. semiconductor stocks were little changed in premarket trade on Wednesday after an AI-led rally, with Nvidia up 0.3% around 6:53 a.m. ET. Memory chipmakers paused: SanDisk and Micron fell 1.3% and 1.2% after jumping 27.5% and 10% a day earlier. Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.22% ahead of ADP private payrolls data and the JOLTS job openings report. 1
Tuesday’s surge pushed the PHLX semiconductor index to an all-time high, up 2.75% on the day and about 8% higher over the first three trading sessions of 2026. Memory and storage-linked stocks led after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, outlined a new layer of storage technology, sending SanDisk up over 27%, Western Digital up 17%, Seagate up 14% and Micron up 10% — all record closes. “I think we’re going to have a very strong earnings season for Big Tech,” said Jed Ellerbroek, a portfolio manager at Argent Capital, with Wall Street heading into results season and the S&P 500 trading at about 22 times expected earnings, LSEG data showed. 2
Huang’s CES roadmap matters for the whole group because it feeds expectations on the next wave of hardware spending. He said Nvidia’s “Vera Rubin” platform is expected later this year, and described “pods” with more than 1,000 Rubin chips that could improve the efficiency of generating “tokens” — the small text units AI systems process — by about 10 times. Nvidia also touted a new storage layer called “context memory storage” and flagged new networking switches using “co-packaged optics,” where it faces competition from Broadcom and Cisco. 3
The memory trade has taken on a life of its own. Chipmakers have been diverting manufacturing capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, or HBM — a fast memory used in AI servers — squeezing supply for other segments, Reuters reported on Monday. TrendForce data cited by Reuters showed prices in some segments have more than doubled since February last year, while Samsung co-CEO TM Roh described the shortage as “unprecedented” in an interview with Reuters. 4
In Asia, investors were also bracing for Samsung Electronics’ preliminary fourth-quarter figures on Thursday, with analysts expecting a 160% jump in operating profit, Reuters reported. TrendForce said DDR5 DRAM prices jumped 314% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier and forecast conventional DRAM contract prices rising 55% to 60% this quarter; analyst Avril Wu said that left Samsung positioned to benefit more from the upcycle. BNK Investment & Securities analyst Lee Min-hee warned that higher chip prices could hit PC and smartphone demand and flagged “risks of a demand slowdown” for AI data centres that rely on debt to fund investment. 5
Elsewhere in the sector, Microchip Technology lifted its forecast for fiscal third-quarter net sales to about $1.19 billion, Reuters reported, helped by a recovery across end markets and strong bookings as customers work through stockpiles built up during the pandemic. The company said it had reduced internal inventory and was preparing to ramp factory output in the March quarter to cut under-utilisation charges, and it will report results on Feb. 5. 6
But the setup is fragile. A stronger-than-expected run of U.S. labour data could push back rate-cut bets and pressure high-valuation chip stocks, while any sign that memory supply is loosening would test a rally that has leaned hard on “shortage” talk.
After Wednesday’s jobs indicators and Friday’s U.S. payrolls report, traders will look to company signals on pricing and capex, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co due to hold its fourth-quarter earnings conference on Jan. 15. 7
