(Gado/Getty Images)

Seagate beats expectations on sales and EPS

The guidance was strong, too.

1/27/26 4:16PM

Seagate Technology Holdings, the maker of data storage products known as hard disk drives, reported its fiscal Q2 numbers after the close of trading on Tuesday. Investors are cheering the results in premarket trading this morning, sending shares up 10.6% as of 4:50 a.m. ET.

For the quarter that ended in December, Seagate reported:

Revenue of $2.825 billion vs. a $2.74 billion expectation from Wall Street analysts.
Adjusted earnings per share of $3.11 vs. the $2.83 anticipated on the Street.

Looking to the current quarter that ends in March, Seagate said it expects adjusted EPS of between $3.20 and $3.60 vs. a $2.99 consensus estimate. Seagate expects revenue of between $2.80 billion and $3 billion in the current quarter, compared to a $2.78 billion consensus estimate.

Seagate shares had their best year since 2009 last year, rising 219% in 2025 as the AI data center boom supercharged demand for data storage products like the hard disk drives Seagate makes. Longtime rival in the disk drive duopoly, Western Digital, also rocketed, rising 282% last year.

Both stocks have continued the surge in 2026 as well, with STX up around 44% and WDC rising 51% this month, too, at the time of writing.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks rebound as the price of oil retreats

Every sector traded higher, with tech leading gains on increased optimism that tankers will be able to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Luke Kawa

Nvidia briefly spikes after Jensen Huang sees at least $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027

The stock then gave it all up and then some.

Luke Kawa10h

Oil’s retreat propels US stocks higher

Front-month West Texas Intermediate futures are down more than 4%, while Brent futures are off more than 2% as of 1:25 p.m. ET as traders glom on to some optimistic signs about the flow of oil through the all-important Strait of Hormuz:

A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”
US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

First non-Iranian cargo transits Strait of Hormuz with AIS on

The Aframax tanker Karachi, carrying Abu Dhabi’s Das crude, has become the first non-Iranian cargo to transit the chokepoint while broadcasting its AIS signal, suggesting that select shipments may be receiving… pic.twitter.com/Q6j6W3Cxz3
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) March 16, 2026

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the news flow is far from universally positive.

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

Trump urges allies to help reopen Strait of Hormuz as tanker traffic nearly vanishes

A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”
US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

First non-Iranian cargo transits Strait of Hormuz with AIS on

The Aframax tanker Karachi, carrying Abu Dhabi’s Das crude, has become the first non-Iranian cargo to transit the chokepoint while broadcasting its AIS signal, suggesting that select shipments may be receiving… pic.twitter.com/Q6j6W3Cxz3
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) March 16, 2026

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the news flow is far from universally positive.

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

Matt Phillips11h

Sandisk and memory stocks rip ahead of Nvidia CEO’s speech

Memory stocks such as Sandisk, Micron, and disk drive makers Western Digital and Seagate sprinted ahead Monday, as this week’s big AI conference for tech bellwether Nvidia gets underway with a speech from the CEO slated for this afternoon.

As Luke Kawa pointed out earlier, CEO Jensen Huang’s speechifying at high-profile company announcements or industry events hasn’t always been a good thing for Nvidia shares. (The chip designer is holding its GPU Technology Conference, or GTC, this week.)

But Huang’s pronouncements have, at times, been pretty dang helpful for share prices of some companies in the orbit of the AI gods. Perhaps foremost among them are the memory stocks that have blasted toward the top of the S&P 500 in terms of price performance in recent years.

Case in point: the nearly 30% gain that Sandisk posted on January 6, the day after Huang’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in which he spotlighted memory as a key bottleneck constraining the AI build-out. (Fellow memory plays Western Digital, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Micron also posted double-digit gains that day.)

Memory stocks have been the highest-profile outlet for bullish AI industry impulses this year, and notable comments from Huang could put the wind back in their sails after they had slowed in recent weeks.

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

What Wall Street’s looking for from Jensen Huang’s keynote GTC address

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

Luke Kawa

14h

What Wall Street’s looking for from Jensen Huang’s keynote GTC address

GTC may stand for GPU Technology Conference, but investors are looking for Nvidia to go beyond GPUs.