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Luke Kawa2/23/26

Tech winners haven’t crushed tech losers by this much since the dot-com bubble was bursting

The performance gap between the tech sector’s winners and losers has reached the 100th percentile, widening to levels not seen since 2000.

That’s according to Jeff deGraaf, head of technical research at Renaissance Macro Research, who flagged in a note to clients the magnitude of this divergence in fortunes within the industry.

The story of the technology trade in 2026 was made clear on the first trading day of the year, with a record outperformance of semiconductor stocks versus their software counterparts.

Since then, software has continued to flounder as new AI tools pull the timetable for potential disruption forward and threaten to undermine the perceived safety of the software industry’s recurring revenue streams and margins. Within the hardware space, the list of winners have become even narrower, with investors focused on data center capex beneficiaries, particularly in memory and semicap equipment.

“To see similar levels of performance differential between winners and losers requires a trip back to 2000 as the dot-com bubble was bursting and the semis were holding up relative to the speculative internet related names,” deGraaf wrote. “Beware chasing good charts in technology, and at the margin, reduce exposure.”

L/S Momentum Russell 1000 Technology — Source: Renaissance Macro Research

Year to date, the best performers in the Russell 1000 Technology Index (and presumably, the best charts) include Sandisk, Western Digital, Corning, Vertiv Holdings, Micron, and Applied Materials.

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Sandisk jumps as Bernstein raises price target to a Wall Street high of $1,250

Sandisk spiked Thursday as Bernstein boosted its earnings estimates for the company, with analysts raising their price target to $1,250 from $1,000, the most optimistic view of the 23 analysts polled by Bloomberg.

The gains come amid a fairly subdued day for broad indexes and other AI memory plays like Micron, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Western Digital.

Bernstein’s more bullish view comes after a surge in prices of NAND flash memory based on AI demand. (NAND flash is used for long-term data storage and is also a key input to consumer products like phones and other devices.)

“Memory prices continue to surprise to the upside with NAND showing the strongest increases and continued acceleration,” Bernstein wrote.

The analysts — led by Mark C. Newman — raised their base case for next fiscal year’s adjusted earnings per share by 58% to $144, from $91. (That new forecast now blows away the Wall Street consensus estimate of $94.07, per FactSet.) The new price target implies a gain of roughly 50% from where the stock is currently.

Bernstein analysts even threw out a “blue-sky scenario” price target of $3,000 for Sandisk, should an even more bullish scene play out for both earnings and market valuations.

Up nearly 250% this year, Sandisk has been the best-performing stock in the S&P 500. It reports earnings on April 30 after the close.

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Infleqtion soars after announcing it’s providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station

Quantum technology firm Infleqtion is booming in early trading after announcing that it would be providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station as part of a cargo mission slated to launch as early as Friday.

The equipment “is designed to support the stable and simultaneous production of dual-species quantum degenerate gases using rubidium and potassium atoms, one of the long-standing scientific objectives of the mission,” per the press release, and will expand the Cold Atom Laboratory’s ability “to investigate ultracold matter and demonstrate advanced quantum sensing in space, under real operating conditions.”

After the close on Wednesday, the company said it was targeting sales of $40 million this year, which if achieved would have revenue growth accelerating to 23% from 12% in 2025.

“Space remains a particularly important market for us in a major area of growth,” CEO Matt Kinsella said during a conference call on Wednesday, highlighting that the company has partnered with NASA for over a decade.

Read more: Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella on how the newly public quantum computing company is “following in the footsteps of Nvidia”

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