Micron rose about 6.1% on September 4, Seagate 6.3% and Western Digital 5.9%. The semiconductor ETF SMH gained roughly 2.6%, Nvidia 0.8%, while SPY fell about 0.4%. Storage outpaced the sector and did not follow the broad index lower.
The BLS released August’s employment report that New York morning: payrolls increased by 162,000 and unemployment remained at 4.1%. These were the initial figures, with later revisions outside this article’s cutoff. The release did not depict an abruptly collapsing labor market, and storage was not simply being lifted alongside a rising broad index.
Micron and the disk-drive companies have different products, customers and earnings cycles. Their joint gain cannot be assigned to one common AI order. Support for supply constraints and anticipated earnings is one reading; a rebound after some storage shares fell a day earlier is another. Micron announced on August 26 that its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call would be on September 30. Those results were still unpublished, leaving a gap between industry expectations and realized profit.
Historical backfill: compiled October 4, 2026, with observations limited to the date discussed and US prices through the September 4 New York close. Sources: BLS August employment release, September 4; Yahoo Finance September 3–4 closing prices for MU, STX, WDC, SMH, NVDA and SPY; Micron’s August 26 earnings-date announcement. Daily moves use the preceding session close. Industry mechanisms are research judgments. The securities MU, STX, WDC, NVDA are discussed solely as subjects of analysis, not as KSINQ recommendations to buy, sell or hold. The cited price changes reflect historical performance and do not imply future results. This article presents personal research and opinion for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.