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Can Sandisk do the double?

The S&P 500 just had its worst quarter in years. Here are the biggest winners and losers.

Sandisk and energy stocks soared while software names sank amid a broad sell-off in tech stocks.

10h

The S&P 500 just wrapped up its worst quarter since Q3 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled markets, falling 4.6% in the first three months of 2026. That’s a sharp reversal from last year’s roughly 18% gain, which marked a third straight year of double-digit returns.

Indeed, in a market rattled by soaring oil prices and growing fears of a tech sell-off, no stock stood out more than the flash memory maker that joined the S&P 500 last November. Sandisk topped the benchmark index with a staggering 168% gain in Q1, following a whopping 559% total return in 2025. That puts it on track to top the S&P 500 list back-to-back — a feat that, according to our analysis, no stock has ever accomplished.

The rally has been fueled by insatiable demand from hyperscalers, whose data centers rely on the company’s flash storage to train and serve AI models. The broader memory and optical cohort followed suit, with Lumentum (up 91%), Ciena (up 66%), Western Digital (up 57%) — from which Sandisk was spun off last year — and Seagate (up 42%) all landing in the top 20 performers of the quarter.

Another group of high-flying stocks came from the energy sector, which just posted its second-best quarter on record relative to the S&P 500 ETF since 1999. Fifteen of the top 30 performers were energy and chemical stocks, including APA (up 74%), Occidental Petroleum (up 58%), and Valero (up 52%), as the conflict in the Middle East sent crude prices soaring well above $100 a barrel.

At the other end of the leaderboard, AppLovin, the ad tech firm that surged 108% in 2025, became the worst performer, with a 41% decline in Q1 as short seller reports, a federal investigation, and the broader software collapse weighed on the stock throughout the quarter.

Many of the software names that dominated 2025 were also hammered by the so-called “Saaspocalypse” earlier this year, as the rise of agentic AI fueled fears that enterprise software firms could eventually be displaced. Software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies accounted for more than half of the bottom 20 performers in Q1, including Trade Desk (down 40%), Workday (down 40%), Adobe (down 31%), and Salesforce (down 30%).

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AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions takes flight

Small-cap AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions surged Thursday after posting better-than-expected Q2 revenue and profit numbers Wednesday after the close, along with an increase in full-year sales and profit guidance.

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

Its Advanced Computing division designs and sells computers, cabling, and cooling systems, the server racks and clusters of racks AI data centers need. Its other main division sells flash and DRAM memory products.

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

The stock is volatile. Penguin dove during last year’s tariff tantrum that followed “Liberation Day” in April. Then it turned tail and doubled through early October amid a surge of call options activity, which tends to reflect retail interest. From the October peak, it then plunged by about 50%, before Thursday’s renaissance.

For what it’s worth, call options activity in Penguin is pretty busy today, too — relatively speaking — with roughly 2,625 traded as of 1:15 p.m. ET. That’s the most since early January, when the company last reported quarterly numbers. The average volume over the previous 25 trading sessions is about 325 calls a day, FactSet data shows.

Penguin Solutions Stock Takes Off On AI Bolstered Outlook

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

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Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

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Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

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it’s so over

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Retail traders are “skipping the dips” to dash for cash and bet against tech stocks

The speculative fever that dominated markets for much of 2025 looks to have broken.

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