Americore Resources (TSXV: AMCO)
Drilling Value in the Silver State
A recently disclosed federal ethics filing revealed that President Donald Trump’s investment accounts purchased shares of Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) in the first quarter of this year. The stock has been one of the biggest AI winners, up more than 2,100% since the start of 2023. In a somewhat ironic twist, the disclosure comes as the stock is experiencing a sharp decline.
One important caveat: these accounts are managed by third-party institutions, meaning the president himself was not directly responsible for the specific buy or sell decisions. The disclosure filing showed that the accounts executed more than 3,600 trades in the first quarter, with Western Digital being just one of many.
The Hard Drive Comeback in the Cloud
The core driver behind Western Digital’s surge is a seemingly “traditional” business — hard disk drives (HDDs). The AI boom has generated massive amounts of data that ultimately need to be stored on some medium, and high-capacity, low-cost HDDs have become the go-to choice for cloud service providers and hyperscale data centers.
Company CEO Irving Tan made it clear in the earnings release: “Virtually every AI workload, from training, inference, agentic AI to physical AI, creates data that is stored persistently and cost-efficiently on HDDs.” The fundamentals support this logic. In the fiscal third quarter ended April 3, 2026, Western Digital reported revenue of $3.34 billion, up 45% year-over-year. Non-GAAP earnings per share nearly doubled to $2.72. Gross margin jumped from approximately 40% a year ago to over 50%, reflecting a significant improvement in pricing power. The company expects fiscal fourth-quarter revenue to continue rising 36% to 44% year-over-year, with gross margin further climbing to 51%-52%.
Why the Decline Amid Strength?
If the business is so strong, why is the stock falling? The reason lies more in industry sentiment than in company-specific issues. Samsung Electronics issued guidance for record quarterly operating profit, also driven by AI-fueled memory demand. Yet rather than cheering, the market grew concerned: could such strong results signal that the notoriously cyclical storage industry has hit its peak? That worry triggered a broad sell-off in memory and storage stocks, and Western Digital was caught in the wave.
Western Digital shares fell more than 8% on Tuesday, closing at approximately $532. The stock’s 52-week trading range is $63.17 to $799.87.
Valuation and Risks
Even after the pullback, Western Digital trades at more than 30 times forward earnings. For a company that the market not long ago treated as a mundane hardware supplier, this is an expensive multiple. The core question is whether the current AI-driven demand surge is sustainable. If the cycle turns, the stock could face significant downside pressure.
After a more than 2,100% rally, buying at current valuations leaves investors with very little room for error. Today’s decline — triggered by “good news” rather than “bad news” — serves as a reminder of just how quickly sentiment can shift in this corner of the market.
