DRAM Spot Market
Major module houses are still holding a fairly high level of inventory, so they are less adhered to the consensus that prices will go up. Currently, their main strategy in the spot market is to have their quotes closely aligned with the quotes in the contract market. Therefore, spot prices are not expected to change significantly before contract prices rise further in November. Even though the overall volume of spot trading remains low, the average prices of items are not fluctuating noticeably. For the mainstream chips (i.e., DDR4 1Gx8 2666MT/s), their average spot rose by 1.46% from US$1.577 last week to US$1.600 this week.

NAND Flash Spot Market

Spot transactions have been ramping up since September under the active inclination of price follow-ups among buyers, though spot prices have slightly mitigated in growth over the past two weeks after arriving at US$2, where some products are seeing a diminishing level of transactions due to the high markup. The continuity of price hikes will require further observations. 512Gb TLC wafer spots have risen by 12.72% this week, arriving at US$2.304.

DRAM Spot Market

The price trend in the spot market has diverged slightly compared with the price trend in the contract price. Spot prices of DRAM chips and modules rose successively over the previous several weeks. However, the upward momentum has lost steam in recent days due to a lack of channel demand. In the case of module house Kingston, it currently holds a high level of DRAM inventory, so its pricing strategy is more conservative compared with other module houses. Also, since Kingston is the leading module house, spot prices of modules on the whole are constrained from climbing further. For now, buyers and sellers in the spot market are taking a wait-and-see approach. The trajectory of spot prices is expected to become clearer following the finalization of prices for 4Q23 contracts. The average spot price of mainstream chips (i.e., DDR4 1Gx8 2666MT/s) rose by 0.71% from US$1.560 last week to US$1.571 this week.

NAND Flash Spot Market

Spot transactions have slightly shrunken recently under insufficient stocks on account of the drastically diminished level of wafer provision from suppliers. On the other hand, buyers who are suppressed in their sentiment of following up with prices, due to the accumulated increment that is already quite significant within the short term, have been relatively restricted in the increase of concluded prices, despite maintaining an upward trend. 512Gb TLC wafer spots have climbed 5.85% this week, arriving at US$2.044.