While the stock market has spent the last two years obsessed with logic chips and GPUs, a significant shift is occurring in the hardware sector. The compute trade, which represents betting on the processors that allow AI models to think, is taking a breather. In its place, smart money is rotating aggressively into the hardware required to store the data.
This shift was on full display during the first month of 2026. SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) surged around 90% on heavy volume, hitting an all-time high of roughly $459. Its former parent company, Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC), rose about 23% during the same period, continuing a massive rally that has seen the stock price more than double over the last 12 months.
