Top 20 US stock trading volumes on March 18: Amazon forecasts that AWS sales will reach $600 billion over the next 10 years

Tuesday’s U.S. stock trading volume ranked No. 1, Nvidia fell 0.70%, with $32.537 billion in trading volume. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang outlined its AI system design approach. He said Nvidia plans to continue using copper-cabling connectivity and updated optical technology in upcoming platforms, including Vera Rubin Ultra and future systems.

This decision indicates that Nvidia is not in a rush to fully pivot to optical networks. Instead, the company appears to be balancing two options: using copper-cabling technology where it remains efficient and proven, especially in today’s data center setups.

Analysts noted that while optical communication technology is improving, large-scale deployment may take time as infrastructure and the supply chain catch up.

Nvidia also pointed to continued improvements in optical networks, including better performance and reliability, but said that as AI demand grows, copper-cabling and optical-communication designs will continue to develop in parallel.

Micron ranked No. 2, rising 4.50%, with $19.253 billion in trading volume. Micron Technology became the first major technology stock to reach a new all-time high since this round of U.S. tech stock pullback. Other memory-related stocks also performed strongly.

Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets issued a research report, raising Micron Technology’s price target from $425 to $525 while maintaining a “outperform the market” rating, citing optimism about a supercycle for memory chips.

An analyst team led by Srini Pajjuri said: “Given that memory-chip prices have continued to strengthen, we have substantially raised our earnings expectations. The key question right now is the length of this cycle—our base-case view is that the price uptrend will run through 2026. Although DDR prices may ultimately pull back, the HBM pricing advantage and higher HBM per unit—HBM per chip in the Rubin Ultra is up by about 3.5x—are expected to create continuing positive momentum, supporting the rally through 2027.”

The analysts further noted: “Worth noting is that in this supercycle, structural drivers (including strong data center demand for HBM, DDR, and enterprise SSDs) are playing an increasingly critical role. As the sustainability of the cycle becomes clearer, we expect further upside room for valuation multiples.”

Tesla ranked No. 3, up 0.94%, with $18.523 billion in trading volume. Tesla has signed a $4.3 billion agreement with LG Energy Solution to build a lithium iron phosphate battery plant in Lansing, Michigan. Production is planned to start in 2027.

The U.S. government announced that the plant will produce prismatic lithium iron phosphate battery cells to support Tesla’s Megapack 3 energy storage systems manufactured in Houston. This effort is part of the broader plan by the U.S. to expand domestic battery production and reduce reliance on China-made batteries.

Earlier reports said that, due to tariffs and foreign supply-chain issues, Tesla has been looking for other suppliers. LG Energy Solution is one of the few companies producing lithium iron phosphate batteries in the United States, and will supply Tesla for several years.

SanDisk ranked No. 6, up 2.35%, with $10.201 billion in trading volume. U.S. chip and storage stocks broadly rose on Tuesday.

Amazon ranked No. 7, up 1.63%, with $9.589 billion in trading volume. Reports say Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in an internal meeting that he expects artificial intelligence to help double sales of Amazon Web Services (AWS), far exceeding prior estimates.

The reports say that on Tuesday, Jassy told employees that over the next 10 years he believes AWS sales could rise to $600 billion, whereas he previously estimated that figure to be closer to $300 billion.

Nebius ranked No. 10, down 10.41%, with $6.593 billion in trading volume. The stock faced pressure today. The decline appears to be driven mainly by dilution concerns related to the company’s latest financing. Previously, the company announced plans to raise $3.75 billion through a convertible bond offering, aimed at supporting the buildout of its AI data center infrastructure.

Convertible bonds could ultimately convert into equity, which increases dilution risk and often affects market sentiment in the short term. This timing adds another layer for the market reaction because this financing followed the strong rally driven by the company’s newly announced multi-year agreement with Meta. After such a sharp surge, some investors appear to be stepping back, reassessing valuations and the cost of financing future growth.

Despite the pullback, Alexander Pruitt, a D.A. Davidson analyst in the top 4% of Wall Street analysts, remains constructive and sees the Meta agreement as an important validation of Nebius’s positioning in the AI infrastructure race.

Eli Lilly ranked No. 14, down 5.94%, with $5.26 billion in trading volume. On the news front, SzhD Biologics (GPCR.US) previously disclosed positive results from its experimental weight-loss drug aleniglipron. The data showed that after 44 weeks of treatment, patients’ weight decreased by about 15%. BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said the drug’s efficacy “looks highly competitive,” and may even be better than Novo Nordisk (NVO.US) and Eli Lilly’s comparable oral medications. SzhD Biologics plans to start late-stage studies in the second half of 2026, using a “low-dose and slow-titration” dosing strategy to prevent gastrointestinal side effects.

Western Digital ranked No. 18, up 9.64%, with $4.225 billion in trading volume.

Intel ranked No. 19, down 3.72%, with $3.935 billion in trading volume. The decline came after the market focused heavily on Nvidia’s presentation of its next-generation GPU systems and an expanded AI infrastructure plan.

At the conference, Nvidia laid out its latest hardware roadmap, including the Vera Rubin architecture and updated Blackwell-based systems, aimed at improving AI inference performance. The company also highlighted new chips focused on inference and expects strong long-term demand for AI infrastructure, reinforcing the expectation that a GPU-centric platform will continue to be the core of data center deployment.

Intel has also been emphasizing its AI inference capabilities using x86 processors and has worked with Nvidia on integrated systems. However, market participants are gradually realizing that, due to its more ambitious roadmap and evolving ecosystem, Nvidia could upend the competitive landscape in the semiconductor industry in the not-too-distant future.

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