Micron Stock Skyrockets: Here’s Why Traders Are FOMOing In

Micron just pulled a rabbit out of its semiconductor hat—and Wall Street’s eating it up. The memory-chip giant’s shares are surging, leaving analysts scrambling to adjust price targets. Here’s the breakdown.

AI Demand Fuels the Fire

Data centers can’t get enough high-bandwidth memory, and Micron’s riding the wave. Forget “just-in-time” inventory—this is “just-more-please” territory as AI workloads explode.

Short Squeeze or Sustainable Rally?

Short interest had crept up pre-pop, suggesting some hedge funds got caught with their spreadsheets down. Now the bulls are charging—whether this is smart money or dumb momentum depends who you ask (and what their position is).

The Cynical Take

Another day, another stock pumping on vague “AI tailwinds.” At least this time it’s an actual hardware company—not some metaverse vaporware.

Image source: Getty Images.

Trump on Tariffs (again)

As CNBC reports, the president wants a 100% tariff on imported chips, but with caveats. "We're going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors," TRUMP said. But he also said that "if you're building in the United States or have committed to build ... there will be no charge."

Build what, you may ask? Well, presumably build semiconductor manufacturing plants. And Micron is building multiple such plants, everywhere from New York State to Boise, Idaho.

And on what exactly will there "be no charge?" Well apparently -- or at least this is how investors are interpreting the cryptic statement -- there will be no charge on any of the semiconductors that you manufacture abroad for import into the U.S.

Is Micron stock a buy now?

So you can see why investors are excited about Micron stock today, even if they're also a bit perplexed about what precisely Trump intended to say.

As for me, I'm more concerned with the numbers. At less than 20 times trailing earnings, Micron stock doesn't look too expensive at first glance. But real free cash FLOW for the company is less than $1.9 billion -- and less than one-third of reported net income. That pushes the stock's price-to-free-cash-flow ratio up past 64. And on a stock that's pegged for less than 5% long-term earnings growth by Wall Street analysts, that's too expensive.

Micron remains a sell.