On Wednesday, Micron Technology was the top stock by trading volume, closing up 8.48% and hitting a record high, with a trading volume of $21.672 billion. Research from Goldman Sachs indicates that Micron Technology alone contributed approximately 51% of the upward revisions to S&P 500 earnings estimates, making it a core driver of the recent earnings forecast upgrades.
Prior to Micron Technology's earnings report, Goldman Sachs had already listed the company as a key favored stock, with its 2026 EPS forecast for the company being about 19% higher than the market consensus.
Data shows that the consensus EPS growth estimate for Micron Technology in 2026 is as high as 605%. Since February 27th, its earnings estimates have been revised upwards by 93%, nearly doubling in just a few weeks. Goldman Sachs noted that this change primarily stems from a surge in AI infrastructure demand and increased spending in defense technology, driving rapid growth in semiconductor demand, which has been quickly reflected in analyst models.
NVIDIA was the second most actively traded stock, closing up 1.31% with a volume of $21.454 billion. AI startup Vast Data announced a $1 billion funding round on Wednesday, valuing the company at $30 billion, with investors including NVIDIA.
Tesla Motors ranked third, closing up 0.28% with a trading volume of $20.407 billion. Tesla Motors released its highly anticipated first-quarter 2026 earnings report after the market close on Wednesday: revenue increased 16% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher vehicle deliveries. Revenue from the energy generation and storage segment declined 12% year-over-year, while revenue from services and other businesses surged 42%.
Tesla Motors expects to commence mass production of its Cybertruck autonomous taxi, Tesla Semi truck, and the large-scale energy storage battery Megapack 3 in 2026. The company anticipates that alongside profit growth in its hardware business, profits from artificial intelligence, software, and fleet-related businesses will also increase simultaneously.
Vehicle Deliveries and Average Selling Price: The company stated that both increased vehicle deliveries and a higher average selling price contributed to revenue growth.
Service Business and Full Self-Driving (FSD) Revenue: Improved gross profit in the services and other business segment, combined with increased sales of FSD software and a growing subscriber base, supported the company's profitability.
Energy Segment Revenue Decline: Lower revenue from the power generation and storage business acted as a drag on overall revenue growth.
Advanced Micro Devices was the fourth most traded stock, closing up 6.67% with a volume of $14.485 billion. Prominent technology stocks generally rose in Wednesday's trading session.
Sandisk ranked fifth, closing up 8.37% with a trading volume of $14.4 billion. Sandisk recently officially launched its new generation SANDISK Extreme PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type B memory card. This product line fully adopts the PCIe Gen 4 interface standard, achieving sequential read speeds of up to 3700MB/s and write speeds of up to 3500MB/s.
Broadcom ranked eighth, closing up 5.09% and reaching a record high, with a trading volume of $9.837 billion. According to reports, some major technology companies are actively seeking alternatives to reduce their reliance on expensive and supply-constrained GPUs from NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices. Some of these companies are turning to Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), an area where Broadcom excels. Among these tech giants, Google was a pioneer in custom ASICs, collaborating with Broadcom to develop its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
Avis Budget ranked tenth, closing down 37.82% with a trading volume of $7.502 billion. On Wednesday, the short squeeze rally in Avis Budget paused, with the stock plunging nearly 40% at the close, following a cumulative surge of 390% within the month. The frenzy in Avis Budget's stock price was initially triggered by an epic short squeeze in early April. Pentwater Capital Management's sudden announcement of a large position build-up in Avis Budget, rapidly increasing its stake to 22%, combined with long-term major shareholder SRS Investment Management already holding nearly half of the shares, led to an extreme compression of the available float for trading.
Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Woronka stated, "We find it difficult to justify the current stock price using traditional metrics and a 12-month investment horizon." He downgraded Avis Budget's stock rating from "Buy" to "Hold." He added, "We believe the risk of the short squeeze leading to further price increases remains very real."
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ranked fourteenth, closing up 5.26% with a trading volume of $6.138 billion. Barclays raised its price target for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing from $450 to $470. The firm reiterated its "Overweight" rating, considering Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing a core holding.
Barclays pointed out that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing delivered strong first-quarter results and raised its performance guidance ahead of schedule, driven by AI demand, with the growth momentum expected to continue. The company's fundamentals are robust, with revenue growing 31% over the past 12 months and a gross margin as high as 62%.
Boosted by this news, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing's stock price rose over 5% on Wednesday, closing at $387.44. Previously, investment firms including Needham and DA Davidson had also raised their price targets or reiterated Buy ratings for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing due to strong AI demand.
Strategy Analytics ranked seventeenth, closing up 9.39% with a trading volume of $5.667 billion. Cryptocurrency-related stocks generally performed strongly in Wednesday's trading session.
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