US stock futures split along familiar lines Monday morning. Technology pulled higher, everything else did not.

Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.50% before the opening bell, and S&P 500 futures added 0.14%. Dow Jones futures fell 0.17% and Russell 2000 futures slipped 0.11%. The Invesco QQQ Trust advanced 0.49% to $734.63 in premarket trading, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust gained 0.14% to $777.42.

The split has a single, identifiable driver: memory chips.

Micron and SanDisk lead a second week of memory gains

Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) climbed roughly 3.5% in premarket trading, pushing the stock back above $1,000 for the first time in about three weeks. SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) rose 5.7%. Both extend a sector-wide move that has run for two weeks on the same argument: the industry cannot make enough memory to satisfy artificial intelligence data centers.

SanDisk closed 13.67% higher on August 13 after laying out a long-term financial model at its Investor Day, guiding to non-GAAP gross margins near 80% and mid-to-high-teens revenue growth from fiscal 2028 through fiscal 2030. Alongside Kioxia, the company also unveiled a ninth-generation two-terabit QLC 3D NAND part aimed squarely at AI inference workloads. The reaction spilled across the group, lifting SK Hynix, Western Digital and Seagate.

Micron’s own numbers explain why the market keeps paying up. In results filed with the SEC on June 24, the company reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $41.46 billion, against $23.86 billion the prior quarter and $9.30 billion a year earlier. GAAP net income was $28.24 billion, or $24.67 per diluted share. Guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter calls for revenue of $50.0 billion, plus or minus $1.0 billion, at a gross margin of roughly 86%.

CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has been blunt about the imbalance behind those figures, telling analysts that “the gap between the demand and supply for all of DRAM, including HBM, is really the highest that we have ever seen” and that Micron can currently serve only half to two-thirds of what several key customers are asking for. New capacity does not arrive quickly: building the fabs and buying the lithography equipment that would close the gap is a multi-year exercise, which is precisely what keeps pricing firm.

Investors weighing exposure to the wider AI hardware complex often start with the largest name in it — our guide to how to buy Nvidia stock covers the mechanics — but the memory names have been the sharper trade this month.

One caveat belongs in the frame. Even after reclaiming $1,000, Micron sits roughly 20% below the record above $1,250 it set in June. The stock fell to around $800 in early August before this rebound. Momentum here has been violent in both directions, and a company that has moved into the upper tier of the world’s most valuable listed companies now swings hard enough to move the index on its own.

The Fed backdrop: hike odds keep fading

Macro is doing the opposite of what equities are doing. In-line July inflation data pulled rate-hike expectations lower again: CME Group’s FedWatch tool showed markets pricing a 30.6% probability of a Federal Reserve hike at the September meeting, down from above 40% immediately after the July CPI release and well above 70% a month before that.

The bond market has drifted with it. The 10-year Treasury yield stood at 4.68% Monday morning, with the 2-year at 4.15% — a curve that has steepened modestly without signaling any conviction about the next move.

Wednesday brings the minutes of the July FOMC meeting at 2:00 p.m. ET, and they matter more than usual. That meeting produced a hold with three dissents in favor of a hike, an unusually wide split. The minutes are the only public read on how close that debate came to going the other way.

Commodities, crypto and global markets

WTI crude futures traded 0.15% higher near $81.59 a barrel. Spot gold rose 0.38% to about $4,393.36 an ounce. The US Dollar Index was 0.20% lower at 99.76. Bitcoin gained 0.50% over 24 hours to roughly $63,300.

Asian markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225, China’s CSI 300, South Korea’s Kospi and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng all closed higher, while Australia’s ASX 200 and India’s Nifty 50 fell. European markets were lower in early trading.

Wall Street closed lower on Friday. The Dow finished at 53,732.41, down 0.20%. The S&P 500 slipped 0.17% to 7,785.76 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.28% to 26,729.16. The Russell 2000 bucked the trend, adding 0.51% to 3,068.42. Energy, utilities and materials led Friday’s session; health care and information technology lagged.

What to Watch for the Open

  • 8:30 a.m. ET — August’s Empire State manufacturing survey from the New York Fed, the first regional read on August activity.
  • 10:00 a.m. ET — August’s NAHB housing market index, a timely gauge of builder sentiment with mortgage rates still near 6.7%.
  • Memory complex — whether Micron holds $1,000 into the cash session. The stock has not closed above that level in about three weeks.
  • After the bell — earnings from XP Inc. (NASDAQ: XP) and Fabrinet (NYSE: FN).
  • The week ahead — Home Depot reports Tuesday, Target and TJX Wednesday, Walmart Thursday. The July FOMC minutes land Wednesday afternoon, and flash S&P Global US PMIs close the week on Friday.

The tension to watch is the one Mohamed El-Erian has described as an “unstable equilibrium”: equity strength sitting alongside soft consumer data and historically elevated bond yields, with asset classes temporarily inhabiting what he calls “different realities.” Retail earnings this week are the closest thing to a referee.