I want to apologize to the legions of you who loyally read my Sunday newsletter.
I let you down. And here’s how.
While getting sucked into covering the 2026 AI stock mania fueled by Micron (MU), Sandisk (SNDK), and SK Hynix (000660.KS), I lost track of what price these stocks are trading at. My focus has been on the daily price swings, not the actual price.
So I thank a viewer for bringing this to my attention via email this week. The average investor can no longer afford to get into the action in many cases. Yes, a stock’s price is not how one should view a company’s future prospects — you have to adhere to valuations.
A $1 stock could be overvalued. And a $500 stock could be undervalued.
But here’s the problem, pointed out by viewer Dorothy:
The stock market is doing something I’ve never seen in more than 30 years of investing: shutting out Main Street’s retail investors.
Yahoo Finance really needs to do a story on this.
Dozens of top NYSE/ Nasdaq names are trading north of $500/share or $1K; splits? Word no longer exists in corporate vocabulary. So unless one buys on margin, who has the outsize amount of cash necessary to even open a 100-share position, especially when a revised analyst price target sends a stock into the outer reaches of the solar system (think Micron, which, by the way, went into a major tailspin in late March after a downgrade).
The longstanding access to stocks that helped so many mom and pop investors succeed is gone.
Dorothy is so on the mark!
Nvidia (NVDA) is over $200 a share. Micron is above $900. Microsoft (MSFT) is hovering around $440. Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) is $379.
Why aren’t these Big Tech companies enacting stock splits that could help bring in the average investor? I can tell you why, having done this for more than two decades. Most companies couldn’t care less about retail investors, which I find amazing given their growing importance to markets.
Here’s a look at when those aforementioned tech giants last split their stock:
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Microsoft last split its stock more than two decades ago, on Feb. 18, 2003. It was a 2-for-1 split, marking the ninth and final time the company split its shares.
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Nvidia last split its stock on June 7, 2024. It was a massive 10-for-1 forward stock split.
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The last time Micron split its stock was more than two decades ago, on May 2, 2000. It was a 2-for-1 forward stock split.
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The last time Alphabet split its stock was on July 18, 2022. It was an eye-popping 20-for-1 stock split.
“The success of these tech stocks and AI Revolution we foresee many stock splits on the horizon in the tech world heading into year end,” Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives said.
