On Wednesday, Micron Technology (third in US stock trading volume) closed down 2.22% with $23.151 billion in trades. Citi predicts Micron's stock still has room to climb before the SEMICON West conference and raised its target price from $1,150 to $1,300. The bank sees DRAM prices performing better than expected, and with AI demand staying strong, Micron's earnings and guidance over the coming quarters hold upside potential. Citi also lifted its forecasts for Micron's August and November quarters, mainly due to blended DRAM selling prices exceeding earlier projections. Currently, Citi expects Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter revenue to reach $51 billion with EPS of $31.45, both above consensus, and believes actual results and subsequent guidance could still beat expectations when the company officially reports earnings.

Amid the bullish sentiment, prominent short-seller investor Michael Burry has recently doubled down on short positions in tech stocks like Micron. This move reflects his lingering skepticism about the durability of the semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) boom. Burry disclosed on Substack on Sept 22 that he has increased short positions in memory chip giant Micron Technology, cloud service provider Nebius, the iShares Semiconductor ETF, and data analytics firm Palantir, emphasizing the operation was "quite large."

Acer CEO Jason Chen recently warned that increased memory chip production in mainland China could eventually ease supply pressures and put downward pressure on prices. The impact is likely to become more visible around the end of 2027. This adds fresh support to Burry's bearish view on memory stocks.

Fourth-ranked Meta rose 1.02% with $22.76 billion in trades. JPMorgan said in a Sept 22 research note that Meta's newly launched AI agent Muse is showing strong early user growth and could become a key gateway for the company to turn AI investments from "ad efficiency boosts" into new revenue streams beyond advertising. The bank reiterated its "overweight" rating and $820 target price, arguing that as consumers and businesses adopt their own AI agents, shopping, booking, and service transactions could increasingly happen through "agent-to-agent" interactions, opening up new business models for Meta outside ads.

Additionally, Meta's biggest annual product event, Meta Connect 2026, runs locally from Sept 23 to 24 (Beijing time Sept 24 to 25). According to disclosures, Zuckerberg will deliver a keynote at 7 AM Beijing time on Sept 24, followed by developer-focused sessions the next day. This year's focus includes next-generation smart glasses, a lightweight mixed-reality device codenamed "Phoenix," and how the recently spotlighted personal AI agent Muse further integrates into the wearables ecosystem.

Fifth-ranked Nvidia slipped 1.47% with $20.165 billion in trades. Nvidia's earnings expectations are climbing rapidly, yet its valuation multiple keeps falling. Data shows its forward 12-month P/E ratio is now below 17 times, near multi-decade lows and roughly half of 2025 levels. Analysts project net profit for the fiscal year ending January 2027 will grow 99%, while the stock has risen only about 20% year-to-date. Jensen Huang said earlier this month at Goldman Sachs' tech conference that Nvidia is a stock combining growth and value and that the company is deeply misunderstood. Analysts expect Nvidia's gross margin to decline from roughly 75% in the second quarter to below 72% in the fourth quarter. Some analysts believe rising memory costs and in-house chip efforts by Meta and Alphabet could weaken Nvidia's pricing power. The current valuation already factors in some slowdown in AI capital spending, but no major cloud providers have yet shown significant cutbacks, nor have major regulatory policy shifts occurred.

Sixth-ranked SanDisk dropped 3.73% with $14.14 billion in trades. Seventh-ranked Tesla rose 0.32% with $12.736 billion in trades. Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave an interview to CCTV Finance. Discussing robots, he painted an optimistic vision: everyone could own personal robots that care for aging parents, watch over children, and serve as one-on-one tutors. In the future, a single person could control hundreds, thousands, or even ten thousand physical robots and digital agents. "My prediction is at least 1 billion humanoid robots within ten years; possibly 10 billion in the next 15 years; and maybe 100 billion in 20 years."

Eighth-ranked Alphabet (Google) fell 3.80% with $12.073 billion in trades. Alphabet said Google Cloud is expanding into new regions, partners, and customers. Google Beam devices will ship to six countries including the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Japan, and will be available at Industrious office locations starting in October, covering Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, and Palo Alto.

Ninth-ranked Amazon declined 2.24% with $10.989 billion in trades. Best Buy and Amazon announced an expanded multi-year Fire TV partnership. Under the deal, the Fire TV experience will be brought to Insignia TVs, while creating more connected TV advertising opportunities through Best Buy Ads.

Tenth-ranked Apple fell 0.80% with $10.659 billion in trades. UBS said Apple's iPhone 18 demand is showing signs of marginal improvement, although China remains the main weak spot in the firm's latest supply chain and wait-time data. The firm maintains a "neutral" rating on Apple with a $296 target price. UBS Evidence Lab found the average wait times for iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max increased by about three days and two days, respectively, week-over-week. The year-over-year decline in wait times has also narrowed to roughly one day, suggesting demand outside China is now nearly flat compared to last year.

Eleventh-ranked Intel slipped 1.02% with $10.325 billion in trades. Thirteenth-ranked AMD dropped 1.47% with $10.014 billion in trades. AMD's market cap recently surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, making it the fourth US chip company to join the "trillion-dollar club." The surge in popularity of the AI agent Muse boosted expectations for server CPU demand growth, driving chip stocks broadly higher. Jefferies analyst Jacky He noted that as AI agents gain wider consumer adoption, higher AI inference, task orchestration, and infrastructure workloads could drive server CPU demand growth.

Fourteenth-ranked Microsoft gained 0.52% with $9.727 billion in trades. Microsoft plans to invest $400 million in subsea and terrestrial connectivity in the Middle East by 2030, including expanding cloud and AI infrastructure in the region.

Fifteenth-ranked SpaceX fell 4.11% with $9.081 billion in trades. Since listing over three months ago, SpaceX has seen its first executive sell signal. Regulatory filings show President and COO Gwynne Shotwell plans to sell nearly $52 million in stock. Additionally, SpaceX plans to execute its 14th test flight no earlier than Sept 28, which would be Starship's first attempt to send the upper stage into Earth orbit. The mission is expected to last about 10 hours, orbit the Earth six times, and deploy 26 V3 satellites for the first time, with the spacecraft splashing down in the Pacific. Unlike previous suborbital tests, this mission marks Starship's transition from a pure testing platform to actual satellite deployment, with success directly validating its ability to deploy V3 satellites at scale and lower launch costs. A successful orbit would be a key step toward a fully reusable system.