Stock market spoiler: Apple's price hikes erase Micron's post-earnings tech rally

Stocks kicked off Thursday's trading session with a tech rally that quickly fizzled as investors weighed Micron earnings and Apple price hikes.

  • Micron's blowout earnings fueled a brief tech stock rally on Thursday before moves reversed.
  • Apple officially raised prices due to higher memory chip costs, dragging down the Nasdaq.
  • Investors are weighing the impact of memory price spikes and what it means for the AI trade.

It's a volatile day on Wall Street after a short-lived tech rally soured and abruptly reversed course.

Micron's stellar earnings report boosted the stock by nearly 20% and reignited the AI trade, helping the Nasdaq 100 jump 2% at Thursday's opening bell.

But it wasn't to last. Just a half an hour into regular trading, the tech-heavy Nasdaq's gains reversed, dragged lower by Apple stock, which dropped on news of price hikes on devices as it responds to the memory-supply crunch.

Apple officially raised price for Macs and iPads, a change outgoing CEO Tim Cook warned about earlier this month when discussing memory chip costs.

Here's where major indexes stood at 10:20 a.m. ET:

The premarket rally was led by the some of the stocks that saw the most dramatic declines earlier in the week, including Micron and other memory chipmakers.

Apple and other Magnificent Seven names were among the tech stocks in the red in Thursday's session.

Here were some of Thursday's most notable moves:

Micron's earnings may have been "too good," Futurum CEO Daniel Newman told Business Insider.

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"The pricing pressure is very real and it's landing in the laps of consumers with the likes of Apple raising prices due to memory," he said, adding, "Structurally the capex and AI trade got validation, but the knock on effects are being digested. This plus profit concentration are certainly contributors to volatility."

Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield told Business Insider that Micron's strong results can't offset a tough technical setup.

"My sense is that even with strong A.I. fundamentals (e.g., Micron), positioning is still really lopsided so good news gets sold intraday. The rotation out of AI infrastructure and memory was never really about fundamentals – it was a technical move – so while Micron’s results reinforce the durability of the AI buildout, it doesn’t do much to relieve the immediate pressure of overcrowded positioning in the tech space," he outlined.

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