Five days. The Nasdaq fell 4%. The Dow rose 0.6%. Korea's Kospi hit circuit breakers twice in one week. Bank of America warned about rate hikes. Oil crashed to $70. Apple and Microsoft raised prices on hardware because memory chips cost too much. Micron printed the best quarter in its history. Core PCE hit 3.4%. OpenAI delayed its IPO because the AI market is too volatile to support a trillion-dollar listing. And through all of it — every single day — more stocks went up than went down. The S&P 500 lost over 1% on the week. But the Dow gained. The Russell held. And the market underneath the headlines looks nothing like the market on the screen.
The Close
Quiet finish to a loud week. The S&P dipped 0.1%. The Nasdaq fell 0.2% — its fifth straight daily loss, the longest since February. The Dow slipped 46 points. Nothing dramatic. The dramatic part was the five-day stretch that led here: the S&P lost over 1% on the week, the Nasdaq dropped 4%, and the Dow gained 0.6%. Three indexes. Three different weeks.
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| Nasdaq | 5 straight losses | −4% week | ||
| Dow Jones | record this week | +0.6% week | ||
| UMich Inflation | long-term fell | peak signal | ||
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| Health Care | +2.0% | |||
| Utilities | +1.5% | |||
| Consumer Staples | +1.0% | |||
| Financials | +0.8% | |||
| Industrials | +0.6% | |||
| Real Estate | +0.4% | |||
| Materials | −0.4% | |||
| Energy | −1.2% | |||
| Consumer Discretionary | −1.5% | |||
| Communication Services | −3.0% | |||
| Information Technology | −4.0% | |||
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Korea hit circuit breakers again — for the second time in four days. The Kospi dropped 8% intraday before closing down 5.8%. Samsung fell 8%. SK Hynix dropped 9%. SoftBank plunged 12% in Tokyo. The selling started overnight and bled into U.S. premarket. Chip stocks opened lower: Micron gave back 2% after Thursday's 17% surge. AMD fell 2.6%. Arm lost 4%. Marvell slipped 3.4%. The semiconductor index is now verging on correction territory — down nearly 10% from its recent high.
OpenAI is delaying its IPO. The New York Times reported Friday that Sam Altman's advisers gave him two options: list in 2027 at a $1 trillion valuation, or go sooner at a lower price. Altman said anything below a trillion was a nonstarter. The reason for the delay: SpaceX's rough ride after its debut — down from $219 to $147 in two weeks — and broader volatility in AI-related shares. JPMorgan traders wrote that the delay raises concerns about "sustainability of infrastructure spending given the delay in funding from capital markets." When the most valuable private AI company decides the public market isn't ready for its stock, the market is telling you something about how it feels about AI valuations right now.
The University of Michigan's final June consumer sentiment reading came in at 49.5 — just above the 49.0 consensus and 10.5% above May. Both current conditions and future expectations rose. But the number that matters: long-term inflation expectations fell sharply. Consumers are starting to see what the market sees — oil at $70, gas prices coming down, the war ending. That's the first real-world confirmation that the inflation peak is in.
ON Semiconductor dropped 14% after agreeing to buy Synaptics. Oil continued falling as more tankers exited the Strait, though a reported attack on a vessel in the Gulf of Oman added a note of caution.
What The Market Is Pricing In
The Nasdaq lost 4% this week. The Dow gained 0.6%. And the gap between those two numbers is the market's answer to the biggest question of the summer: is the AI trade broken, or is it just repricing?
Here's the week in one chain. Monday: SpaceX fell 14%, Alphabet fell 5%, the Russell hit 3,000. Tuesday: Korea tripped circuit breakers, the semiconductor ETF fell 7%, BofA warned about hikes. Wednesday: oil crashed to $70, the market held flat. Thursday: Micron printed a record quarter, Apple fell 6% on price hikes, PCE came in at 3.4% core. Friday: Korea broke again, OpenAI delayed its IPO, the market barely moved. Five days. Five different catalysts. One through line: the biggest tech names sold off hard, and the rest of the market absorbed it.
Every day this week, more stocks went up than went down. Monday it was 299 of 503 in the S&P. Thursday it was 393. Friday the pattern held. The semiconductor index is down 10%. The Nasdaq is down 4%. But the Dow gained. Health care rallied. Industrials rallied. Banks passed stress tests and raised dividends. The S&P 500 is down 3% in June after surging in April and May — and the Schwab team noted that this looks like "a potentially healthy development" as investors rotate beyond tech.
The Nasdaq fell 4% in a week that included the best chip earnings report of the year, an in-line PCE reading, and oil at pre-war levels — and the market is telling you that the AI trade is repricing from "everything AI goes up" to "only the companies with pricing power survive," while the rest of the market quietly gets stronger underneath. That's not a crash. That's a rotation. The money isn't leaving. It's changing address. The semiconductor index near correction territory tells you the old leaders are getting marked down. The Dow at a record tells you the new leaders are being found.
I watched the Nasdaq peak in March 2000 and fall for months while the Dow held through September. For six months, tech went one way and everything else went the other. The question then — same as now — was whether the economy was strong enough to carry the non-tech market once the tech darlings faded. In 2000, the economy eventually followed tech down. Today the setup is different: oil is falling, not rising. The consumer is still spending. Jobs are at 172,000. The Iran deal is opening the Strait. The ingredients for economic strength are here in a way they weren't in 2000. Whether they hold is the question for July.
What's Next
Three things I'm watching next week
01 — Alphabet joins the Dow Monday June 29
Alphabet replaces Verizon in the Dow Jones Industrial Average before Monday's open. It's the first internet-era company to enter the blue-chip index alongside Caterpillar and Goldman Sachs. Every Dow-tracking fund has to buy the stock. The question is whether the forced buying stabilizes Alphabet after three straight weeks of selling — or whether the AI talent departure concerns and the broader tech rotation overwhelm the index rebalance flows. If Alphabet rallies on its first day in the Dow, the rotation may have found a floor.
02 — June jobs report Friday July 3
The most important number of the month. May came in at 172,000 — double expectations. If June is strong again, the economy-is-fine narrative holds and the rotation into industrials, banks, and small caps keeps going. If jobs come in weak — below 100,000 — the rotation story shifts from "healthy broadening" to "economic slowdown," and the selloff that's been concentrated in tech starts spreading. Consensus is building around 130,000. The number arrives the day before a long Fourth of July weekend.
03 — OpenAI's IPO delay and the AI funding question
OpenAI pushing its listing to 2027 isn't just about one company. It's a signal about how the capital markets feel about AI valuations right now. SpaceX went from $219 to $147 in two weeks. Cerebras fell 16% after its first earnings. The semiconductor index is in near-correction. If the public market won't fund AI at a trillion-dollar price tag, the private money — the venture rounds, the debt offerings, the partnership deals — becomes the only source. That's more expensive capital. And more expensive capital means slower buildout. Watch whether other pre-IPO AI companies (CoreWeave, Databricks, Scale AI) start adjusting their timelines. The dominoes are connected.
The Nasdaq fell 4% this week. The Dow gained. Breadth held every day. Micron printed a record. Apple raised prices. OpenAI backed away from the public market. The rotation is real. The question for July is whether it stays healthy — money moving from tech to everything else — or whether the tech selloff starts pulling the economy down with it. Jobs on July 3 will tell you.
That's it for today. Have a good weekend. I'll be back on Monday after the close.
