I went back through the biggest winners of 2025. Western Digital kept showing up. The marked run was 914% in 301 days. Forty-three weeks. The hard part was never the entry. It was staying with the trade.
Why this name
Western Digital sells memory. Hard drives and flash, sold into more than one market. AI has been eating the bits, and the shortage showed up in the price across a myriad of these names. Memory got expensive because the supply was spoken for.
The fundamentals of these companies in the “AI Trade” are off the charts. WD earnings went triple digit more than once. September 2024 was up 201%. December 2024 was up 357%. March 2025 was up 186%. It cooled after that, then came back to 100% in March 2026 and 114% in June 2026. Sales were still down from the year before all through the 2025 base. They turned up in 2026, 45% and then 44%. Return on equity was 86%, then 131%.
Traders obsess about the pattern. The pattern is how we get in, but the growth is why a stock can keep going. I want liquid leaders whose earnings and sales are actually moving, because that is the customer showing up in the numbers. A company can do interesting work and still be early. If the orders are not there, I do not care how good the demo looks.
Memory in 2025 had the orders.
What the market was doing
From February 2025 into the April low, the Nasdaq was in a real steep downtrend. About two months, and well under the 200-day. That is a bad place to be buying breakouts.
The break was the tariff tantrum. April 2 was the announcement. The next two sessions were the slide. A few days later the pause put up a 12% day on the Nasdaq. Crowd one way, then the other, in a week.
Two follow-through days sit in that mess. One failed. One worked.
The first follow-through is where I would have tried to get involved, but backed away after a close below the low of the day.
The second FTD worked like a charm.
The setup
On April 25, Western Digital was not a trade I would have taken. It was coming straight off the bottom with the market, and it had no base. I walked it day by day and asked myself (honestly) where I would have bought it. I do not see a clean spot.
My setup showed up in August.
From the April follow-through, the stock ran about 110% in 77 sessions. Then it stopped and built a base. I want two or three weeks sideways.
I interpret the base in the spirit of a high-tight flag. A textbook pole is four to eight weeks, and this run was considerably longer.
I need to be able to draw the flag when I buy a breakout. A hard run, then a short tight range off the top, where buyers and sellers agree on a price and the gain gets digested. The breakout from that range is my best entry. The same drawing shows up in a high-tight flag, the handle of a cup-with-handle, a flat base, a double bottom.
On the way into that flag, the stock respected the 10-day. If I buy it, the 10-day is the first trailing stop. Stocks pick their own average.
The run
914% in 301 days. Forty-three weeks.
The 10-day and the 21-day are the short trail. If I am trying to sit with it as a position, the line is the 10-week, which is the 50-day on the daily. There was no decisive close under that longer average for the whole run.
I cannot sit full size and watch the account draw down into the 10-week. I have tried. I do not have that personality. So the rule I would have used is three sales:
A close through the 10-day, I sell a third.
A close through the 21-day, I sell another third.
The last third stays until the 10-week breaks.
If it gives me another flag, I add back to full. If that add fails, I am back to the core. The original third does not come off until the weekly line breaks. That is how I would have tried to still be there for a move this long without pretending I can white-knuckle it.
The relative strength line was at a new high on the August breakout, and it kept making new highs the whole way up. That line is the stock against everything else. When it is poking out to new highs, institutions are spending time there.
The top
The top was early June 2026. The top tick was June 18.
The topping action was volatile, and it was a downtrend. Lower highs, lower lows after a climatic run.
July 2, 2026 is the bar I would tape to the screen. It traded above the 21-day, then dropped about 10% and briefly traded under the 50-day. A clear change in character.
I would like to think I catch that. Honestly, if I had been up a huge amount, the volatility would have bothered me before the textbook signal did. I think I keep the core until the 10-week breaks. I think I am gone on the rest once the 21-day fails that hard.
What I take from it
The stock was already up about 100% when the August flag formed. The campaign finished at 914%.
A 100% move feels like a lot while you are in it. It can still be the start. Big winners can go a lot further than you think.
The rule that makes the hold possible, for me, is the scale-out. Ten-day, then 21-day, then the 10-week for the piece I am willing to sit with. Add back only on another flag.
August 22 was the breakout. June 18 was the top tick. July 2 was the day the stock stopped behaving.