SanDisk Slides Again as SK Hynix's Warning Unwinds the Memory Trade

Where the Selling Actually Started

The SNDK drawdown isn't really a Sandisk story. It began July 13 in Seoul, when SK Hynix cratered after a brokerage cut its quarterly profit estimate — Korea Investment & Securities pegged the number roughly 8% below consensus, citing slower-than-expected HBM4 shipments. That reset sentiment across the whole memory complex, and Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital all fell alongside it. SNDK sits at the highest-beta end of that trade after a run of more than 600% year-to-date, so it took the hardest hit — down double digits intraday on the worst sessions and now extending the slide another 7.92% over the past 24 hours to about $1,545. Nothing in Sandisk's operations changed. This is the memory tape de-rating, and the priciest name is paying for it first.

Argus Breaks the Buy-Side Wall

The fresh accelerant was Argus Research initiating coverage with a Hold on July 15, which knocked the stock down another 7.3% on the day. It's a notable break because Argus's Jim Kelleher — ranked among the top analysts tracked by TipRanks — is one of the only voices on the name not saying buy. His logic is plain cyclicality: conditions are excellent right now (tight NAND supply, AI-datacenter demand, fat margins), but 'any tempering in demand could cause a severe reaction in product pricing and the share price.' With SNDK trading near 60 times trailing earnings, that asymmetry is the entire bear case — you're paying a peak multiple for peak-cycle economics. A single Hold shouldn't move a stock this much on its own, but into a crowded, up-600% name with no other caution on the sheet, it was the pin.

The Tape and the Targets Disagree

Here's the tension worth trading: SNDK is being sold while sell-side targets are still going up. Even through the selloff, analysts have been raising their price targets — Amit Daryanani lifted his to $3,100 from $1,400, pointing to roughly $62 billion in guaranteed minimum revenue from long-term supply deals. That's a fundamentals-are-fine argument colliding with a positioning-is-crowded tape, and both can be true at once: the business can be under-earning its future while the stock is over-owned after a parabolic run. The roughly $494 million in 24-hour volume on the Hyperliquid SNDK perp shows how two-sided the fight has become. The clean resolution is the August 5 earnings print — until then, this is a sentiment and valuation unwind, not evidence that the NAND cycle has actually turned.