Key Highlights

  • Sandisk lost 22.26% on Thursday, November 5, 2026, the steepest drop in the S&P 500, as a wide AI and chip rout battered memory and storage shares.
  • Western Digital shed 17.35% and Seagate declined over 16%, so every storage name in the group lost at least 16% within one session.
  • Broader indexes slumped too, with the Nasdaq Composite off 5.52% and the S&P 500 down 4.36%, the sharpest session since April 2025, and tech stocks down 8.00%.
  • Qualcomm slipped about 19% even though its results were strong, since its outlook pointed to a shortage of memory components for handsets, per published reports.

Storage and Memory Names Sink Together

Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) posted the steepest decline among S&P 500 members on Thursday, November 5, 2026. Storage and memory makers often trade as a group, so one company's slide tends to pull peers along. Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) fell 17.35% in the same session. Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) lost more than 16%. Sandisk supplies flash storage for phones, PCs and data centers, while Western Digital and Seagate are hard-drive businesses. One market wrap said Micron and AMD each fell about 17% and Nvidia dropped 9%, a figure no second source confirmed. The shared thread looks like a rotation out of AI-linked hardware.

The Data-Center Worries Behind the Chip Selloff

Commentary in market wraps tied the slide to worries that Democratic wins in Congress, Texas and Georgia might slow data-center building through stricter rules or local pushback. Qualcomm's soft guidance, which blamed a memory-component shortage, added pressure to chip names. Demand for flash storage ties to AI data-center buildouts, so any sign of delay can reprice expectations quickly. The reviewed material held no company-specific announcement for Sandisk, which points to a sector-driven move. Broadcom and Intel each fell about 10%, and a published report described the pullback as an unwinding of a crowded AI trade.

Cyclical Pricing Risk and What Comes Next

This group's fortunes follow a cycle in memory and storage pricing, which tends to make its shares swing harder than the broader market in either direction. A decline above 20% within one session is rare for an S&P 500 member, and market commentary framed it as a sign of how crowded the AI hardware trade had grown, a view rather than a verified positioning figure. The scorecard for Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) and its rivals will be whether data-center orders hold up, whether prices stay firm and whether the slide fades. Friday futures were split, and October payrolls are due before the bell. The move reads as a sector event rather than a verdict on any single balance sheet. Sentiment-driven moves in chip stocks can reverse quickly, so first-day figures may look different once later trading is included. Customer concentration and balance-sheet strength also deserve attention, since each company leans on a handful of large cloud buyers.

Where Things Stand

The slump was sector-wide, not a Sandisk-specific event. Shares of Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) dropped 22.26% while AI-linked hardware sold off over data-center fears and a soft Qualcomm outlook. Western Digital slid 17.35% and Seagate more than 16%. No company announcement explained the move, and the memory-shortage reading that hurt Qualcomm sits awkwardly beside a storage selloff. Watch Friday's trading, any policy headlines on data centers and what the next company updates bring. Investors are also weighing how much Revenue each company draws from a handful of large data-center customers. Those numbers are tied to the November 5 close and could shift once Friday's session unfolds.