2) The first HDD pullback ended fast. Both STX & WDC jumped to new ATHs. But this is much more than any single earnings, which were good. STX guided down slightly in Jul. Stock fell next day then just kept rising. Secular outlook only improved due to AI. https://x.com/ResearchQf/statu...

3) Both calls are worth a listen. They offer different looks at HDDs & AI storage, but here are a few details. STX shipped 159 EBs of nearline capacity, or another new high. Post-pandemic inventory correction low was 55 EBs in 2023! Shortages, visibility extending into 2027

4) I doubt STX and WDC deviate too much from each other, but WDC recently outperformed. Its strategy of optimizing more mature ePMR & UltraSMR roadmaps toward 28TB and 36TB capacities has been successful. At the same time, HAMR customer qualifications have been pulled into 1H26

5) Normally I'd be on watch for a cyclical top given strength and duration of this cycle. Inventory builds, capacity adds, utilizations of HDDs at customers etc. But this storage & memory cycle might just be unlike any that many investors reflexively pattern match to. It's

6) Prices keep rising broadly. DDR5 now tripled, but little evidence of inventory build. If demand is 150 and supply is 100, ordering 200 makes no difference. It's almost scary. Don't mention possible EPS Q's out. Normalized earnings are probably rising. https://x.com/ResearchQf/statu...

@ResearchQf Great distillation. Recently I’ve been dabbling in commodity option theory and arbs - and in this sense squeeze on supply’s can often mean correlations between front delivery month’s can be can be inversely correlated with later supply delivery I.e., sensitivity of M1 is higher

@ResearchQf "Memory and storage have re-emerged as the backbone of the AI hardware cycle. The surge of STX, MU, Hynix, and Kioxia reflects not speculation, but a structural revaluation of compute–data balance. As AI scales, latency, bandwidth, and data locality are redefining performance

@ResearchQf Any thoughts on Pure Storage?

Amazon and Microsoft headcount Increasingly confident we have seen peak Mag 7 employment

Wait until he meets actual shorts.

The Fama-French “investment factor.” Chart shows the total return of stocks of high-investment companies relative to low-investment companies from 1963 to 2025. In the Fama-French five-factor model, the Investment factor (CMA – “Conservative Minus Aggressive”) captures this

Morgan Stanley: AWS is suffering from compute bottlenecks, and AWS is now entering an “AI growth acceleration cycle.” Morgan Stanley’s analyst summarized four key growth drivers. ① Rapid expansion of capacity: By year-end, it will secure an additional 1 GW of compute capacity,