Stocks post third straight week of losses as Brent crude surges above $100

Memory stocks Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings rose again Friday, putting these crucial providers of chips for AI inference work on track for big weekly gains after last week’s steep losses following the outbreak of war with Iran.

There’s no obvious trigger for the move higher for these shares this week, other than a bit of a recovery in the AI trade more broadly — AI beneficiaries like IT cable and connections maker Amphenol and custom chip and networking company Marvell Technology clawed back some gains this week — perhaps due Oracle’s earnings earlier, and some mean reversion to boot.

Micron is due to report earnings after the close of trading on Wednesday, with the company catching a couple price target hikes this week, including one from Wedbush on Friday.

Sandisk is something of a different story, as its enormous gains over the last 12 months — roughly 1,200% — have made it a momentum play beloved by the retail crowd.

It was up about 20% this week at around 11 a.m. ET. And its nearly 170% gain this year keeps the stock on top of the S&P 500, in terms of price performance.

Crypto stocks rose in early Friday trading, riding a rebound in the price of bitcoin to more than $73,000.

Coinbase, Strategy, Circle, and MARA Holdings were among the biggest gainers of that cadre. Their end-of-the-week bounce might be getting a bit of extra oomph from the fact that companies have picked up a fair bit of interest from short sellers in 2026, as bitcoin fell about 15%.

Some of those shorts might be looking to quickly close out positions — which requires buying the stock — ahead of what could be another unpredictable weekend of war.