Semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) added 94 basis points to the Parnassus Fund’s return, as the stock jumped 21.3% from $21.92 to our average selling price of $26.59. Micron makes two kinds of memory chips, DRAMs (dynamic random access memory) and NAND flash memory chips. Memory chips are commodities, which are sensitive to supply-demand relationships.
Memory chip prices continued their upward momentum from 2016 due to surging demand from data center servers, smartphones and Internet-connected devices, while producers were careful not to oversupply the market.
From Jerome Dodson (Trades, Portfolio)'s fourth-quarter 2017 Parnassus Fund shareholder letter.
