DRAM Slides Another 4.90% as Morgan Stanley Calls Time on the Memory Trade

Wall Street Calls the Memory Top

DRAM's latest 4.90% slide to $59.27 isn't happening in a vacuum. It caps a week where Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson told clients to cut memory exposure — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — and rotate into hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, arguing the narrow, semiconductor-led move is over and leadership is broadening. When the Street's most-watched strategist calls the top on the exact basket this ETF is built from, the bid gets thin fast. The "sell chips" framing landed the same week the whole complex started breaking down, and DRAM has been trading like a leveraged proxy for that call ever since.

A Record Profit That Still Wasn't Enough

The tell is what *didn't* work. Samsung posted a record quarterly operating profit and the stock still sold off hard, because the memory trade had been bid to a point where anything short of flawless became a reason to sell — the revenue line came in light and that was all it took. DRAM is a concentrated bet: roughly 27% Samsung and 25% Micron, with SK Hynix rounding out a top three that's more than 70% of the fund. One cautious analyst note or one soft print moves the entire basket. That concentration cuts both ways — it powered the run higher, and now it's amplifying the drawdown.

How Big the Unwind Got

Zoom out and the damage is real. Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and DRAM itself have all crossed into bear-market territory, down more than 20% from highs set only weeks ago, with Yahoo Finance's semiconductor basket shedding roughly $1.5 trillion in market value since June 25 and 25 chip names dropping at least 20% in seven trading sessions. But context matters: DRAM is still up more than 130% since its April 2026 launch even after falling over 14% in five days. Micron went into the week up 245% year-to-date and SanDisk up 635%, so a meaningful share of this is profit-taking after a run that got stretched — not a thesis break.

The SK Hynix Test

The next catalyst is dated. SK Hynix debuts on the Nasdaq around July 10 in a roughly $29 billion ADR offering — 17.79 million new shares, on track to be the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company. For a DRAM holder that's a two-sided event: strong demand for the ADR would signal the memory bid is still intact, while a soft debut would confirm exactly the rotation Wilson is describing. The fund's direction over the next few sessions probably gets decided by how that listing is received — and by whether the sector can hold key levels into it — rather than by any single earnings line.