New York, March 3, 2026, 10:04 (EST) — Regular session
Sandisk Corp stumbled 7.2% to $574.26 in Tuesday morning trading, a steep drop after closing at $619.08 the day before. Shares on the Nasdaq touched $566.50 at their session low.
Sandisk’s drop is notable—it’s turned into the market’s go-to memory stock for riding the AI data center boom. Risk-off sentiment hits these high-fliers first, regardless of whether anything’s different about the underlying story.
Investors want new cues on demand and pricing while management makes the rounds at conferences. With a business like this—where profits move with memory prices—the tone coming from execs can be just as critical as the figures themselves.
Stocks got hit at the open, with Wall Street selling off hard on fears the expanding Middle East conflict could stoke inflation and shake up trade. The Nasdaq Composite slid 456.5 points, down 2.01% right out of the gate. The S&P 500 also lost ground, off 81.4 points, or 1.18%. 1
Oil’s where the squeeze landed hardest. Brent crude surged to a 14-month peak, trading near $82 a barrel—about $10 above Friday’s close, according to Reuters’ Morning Bid column. 2
The drop hit other storage and memory stocks as well, marking a broader sector stumble rather than any news tied just to Sandisk. Western Digital dropped 6.4%. Micron shed 6.6%. Seagate sank 5.4% earlier in the session.
Sandisk, a maker of NAND flash memory—core tech for solid-state drives—recently projected a big jump for its fiscal third quarter, with supply still constrained and data-center demand climbing. “This quarter’s performance underscores our agility in capitalizing on better product mix,” CEO David Goeckeler said in a January filing. The company also flagged brisker enterprise SSD rollouts. 3
But markets can turn sharply. Should the conflict ease, oil prices might slip and those pricey tech shares could rebound. Escalation, though, would keep traders on the defensive, cutting risk. Next up: Sandisk steps into the spotlight at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, 7:50 p.m. ET. Investors will be tracking any change in commentary on demand, supply, or pricing. 4
