Surely this can be solved with financial engineering. The memory makers build more capacity, but they finance it with something like floating-rate notes linked to an index of memory prices, or even catastrophe bonds or AT1s. Or more crudely, set up special purpose vehicles to build the extra capacity, and issue convertible bonds from those; if the memory market collapses, investors don't get paid, but they do get a memory factory.
replyIf they don't expand capacity much, the only negative consequences I foresee happening for them is that they might lose spending discipline, and that systems will be set up to make do with a little less memory. Apart from that, it's just very high profits followed by more or less regular profits.
replyThey could wind up losing all their business to China though.
replyChina has memory makers who are creeping up through the stages of production maturity, and once they hit then there's no going back.
If the existing makers can't meet supply such that Chinese exports get their foot in the door, they may find they never get ahead again due to volume - that domestic market is huge so they have scale, and the gaming market isn't going to care because they get anything at the moment, which is all you'll need for enterprise to say "are we really afraid of memory in this business?"
Good point, it's a risk but so far the Chinese competition isn't up to par and it's unclear whether they'll be able to exploit the current window of opportunity.
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