Fading Memory, Retail Renaissance, and Standby on SpaceX 6/23/26

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You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.

**Brian Salvin Kelly** (1:02)
And I am Brian Salvin Kelly. We'll be back tomorrow. Welcome to The Exchange, everybody. Tech's still under pressure right now, but we are off session lows. At the start of trading, Nasdaq down as much as two and a half percent. The chips, they're down. Microsoft losing about 10% as the world waits on Microns earnings tomorrow night.
But it is not all bad. IBM, it keeps going up. It got an upgrade over JP Morgan that's helping those investors. Microsoft actually higher right now in what has been a lousy month. Microsoft coming into the day on pace for its worst month in nearly 25 years. Welcome everybody. Obviously, there is a lot of news, a lot of trades and a lot of important data to get through. So let's kick it off right at the top.
Michael Sansaterra is Sylvain Capital Management CIO, and he is here for your opening exchange. Michael, welcome. We have got a lot to get through. Listen, I understand you are not a specific semiconductor analyst, but these are companies you may own or keep an eye on.
They have been the source of a lot of money making the last year, but not the last few days. So what do you make of what's going on right now?

**Michael Santerelli** (2:12)
Yeah, I think the most important thing we're seeing is what goes up can also come down and if you go hyperbolic up, you can go hyperbolic down just as quick.
The memory guys in particular, you mentioned Micron in the opening statement. Everyone's focused on Micron opening their mouth tomorrow night, and the stock has had a meteoric rise, arguably had a re-rating from a multiple perspective going from five times to 10 times. The question is, is it different now? The question is, where are they sitting? I don't think there's any doubt that the demand for memory will continue, and it's greatly outstripping supply, so pricing is strong, but we've got to look down the road and see how long does this last. Right now, stocks and semis in particular are really getting pulled back because of the fantastic returns they put up in such a short period of time.

**Brian Salvin Kelly** (3:00)
Yeah, and listen, we can put that chart back up, and I want to make it very clear to our audience that context is key, okay? The Korean stock market fell limit down 9.99999% overnight. The Korean stock market is up 240% in 12 months. Microsoft or Micron rather, not Microsoft, we'll get to that in a minute, Micron, about the same. So let's just put everything in context. But you had said, Michael, that you quote, re-rated Micron a short while ago.
Why?

**Michael Santerelli** (3:33)
The question really is how long does this memory under supply last? What does it look like from a new capacity perspective, we know is coming.
How do the GPU manufacturers like NVIDIA deal with the memory glut and the issues that it's running into from a processing standpoint as well? Do we see a KV cache or a more segmented portion of memory better handle some of these models? There's a lot of questions we have to answer.
To answer those questions in the no is to say, the memory is still a commodity and that this is all short-lived. If you start to say yes to some of those questions, what you're really saying is, okay, then it's different this time. We all know that when you say it's different this time, that's a real risk. The re-rating really is how long can margins stay strong at a Micron? How long, not just the gross margin, but the operating margins.

**Brian Salvin Kelly** (4:24)
We're going to find out tomorrow night, Michael.
Micron earnings are out tomorrow night. Then I would assume you're watching them closely. I'm sure you watch a lot of things closely, but right now is Micron, at least this week, the most important stock in America?

**Michael Santerelli** (4:41)
I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's definitely the most important stock to tech investors for the next 48 hours. How about that? We'll take it. Listen, it's still a commodity space, and it is in massive demand, and it is being massively influenced by AI, and it will continue to do so for the next few years. However, they'll have a strong quarter. They'll have good guidance. Will it be sufficient in a short-term basis to make traders happy? Hard to say, probably not.