US stock markets faced overall downward pressure and fluctuated lower overnight on August 18, with the three major stock indexes closing down collectively. Market risk aversion continued to rise driven by surging oil prices and soaring long-term Treasury yields. Closing data shows that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.51%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.52%, and the Nasdaq Index edged down 0.32%. Most sectors adjusted along with the market, with the consumer and communication service sectors leading the declines.

The market showed obvious structural differentiation. Against the overall market correction, the semiconductor memory chip sector strengthened against the trend and maintained an independent bull market trend, becoming the strongest market theme of the day. Industry leader SanDisk’s share price surged nearly 9% in a single day, pushing the global memory chip index higher and officially pulling the sector back into the bull market range.

The counter-trend rally of memory chips is mainly driven by continuous industry inventory digestion and recovering downstream demand from AI servers and consumer electronic product stocking, which greatly improves the industry’s supply and demand pattern. Institutional analysis indicates that differentiation among global semiconductor sub-sectors is intensifying. The memory chip industry has completed bottom clearing and entered a recovery upward cycle, while most traditional technology sectors are still suppressed by high interest rates and inflation uncertainties.

With the accelerated construction of global AI computing power and the iteration of new consumer electronic products in the second half of the year, market demand for memory chips will continue to be released, and industrial prosperity will keep rising. The memory chip track will remain the most deterministic growth segment in the technology sector, driving the overall recovery of the global semiconductor industrial chain.