Indexes

Equities rebounded from Wednesday's hawkish-Fed retreat, and the buying clustered in semiconductors and small caps after a signed US-Iran peace accord and a chipmaking partnership between Apple and Intel pulled investors back toward the riskier corners of the market. The advance was lopsided: the Dow barely stayed positive while the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 ran hard.

The shape of the move was its own signal. Small caps and megacap technology, usually an odd pairing, rose together, while the financial and energy names that anchor the Dow went the other way and held the blue-chip average to a fractional gain.

Sector Heat Map

Only four of the eleven S&P sectors finished higher, an unusually narrow split for a session this green at the index level.

Technology led on the Intel news and the chip group's broad rally, with materials and consumer discretionary the only cyclicals to follow. The laggards filled in the rest: financials handed back the curve-driven pop they took on Wednesday, and energy fell hardest even as crude rose, the Iran accord still pressing on the group.

In the News

Drivers

1. The long-weekend gap. The US cash session goes dark Friday for Juneteenth, so every position set on Thursday rides a three-day break before it can be adjusted, and the calendar underneath it is not quiet. Oil futures reopen Sunday evening while the Strait of Hormuz reopening stays unconfirmed; four Iran-linked tankers have turned toward the strait, but the backlog could take weeks to clear and war-risk insurance is still elevated. A smooth reopening pushes crude lower and stretches the relief for airlines and consumers, while any setback, whether a stalled tanker or a crack in the 60-day nuclear timetable, gaps oil higher with no equity market open to hedge against until Monday.

2. The IT-services re-rating. Accenture's 19% drop on its first bookings decline turned a slow-building worry into a market event: is agentic AI adding to consulting demand or eating into it? The selling already reached IBM and the offshore names, and Monday brings the first wave of analyst notes and target cuts. The same question now hangs over the software vendors whose valuations assume AI lifts their customers faster than it replaces the work in between.

3. The Fed path against the data. Thursday's claims and factory rebound gave the hawks fresh cover, and futures still price an increase by autumn. Micron's results next week put the AI-demand question to a name outside the handful that led Thursday.

SPY, daily: a clean reclaim of the 20-day average surrendered Wednesday.

Intel, daily: the chip pact carried the stock to a record close.

Micron, daily: the memory maker broke out alongside the chip group.

IBM, daily: the services name broke lower on the Accenture warning.

Rates, FX, Commodities

Treasuries gave back a sliver of Wednesday's hawkish move. The ten-year eased a basis point to 4.45% even as Thursday's data argued for higher rates, a sign the autumn hike traders rushed to price is now largely in.

That left the gap between the two-year and the ten-year near 26 basis points, holding the flatter shape the curve took on Wednesday's repricing rather than extending it.

The dollar pushed higher for a second day, back above 100.80, as the firmer Fed outlook drew money toward US assets and knocked gold down 1.2% to $4,229. Crude steadied and edged up after a multi-session slide, though it held near three-month lows with Iranian supply set to return. The commodity prints above were pulled fresh after Thursday's settle rather than rolled forward from the prior session.

Technicals

The benchmarks reclaimed the lines they surrendered on Wednesday. At 7,500 the S&P 500 settled back atop its 20-day, which sits near 7,475, and about 1.4% under the June 3 record of 7,609.78; the 50-day near 7,265 is the deeper support. The Nasdaq 100, at 30,406, sat back above its own 20-day and pushed into the upper half of its June range. Rates told a quieter story: the ten-year at 4.45% backed off the 4.55% spring high that caps its range, where a break above would lift yields, with the 50-day near 4.42% the first floor beneath. The session's most violent single-stock move belonged to Accenture, charted by the hour below.

Accenture, hourly: the gap down at the open deepened through the day as the conference call kept the sellers in control.

Breakouts & Breakdowns

Breakouts

Intel (INTC) closed at $133.99, a record high, clearing its prior peak near $131 on the Apple manufacturing pact; that old high becomes the first support, with the 200-day average far beneath the move.

Micron (MU) finished at $1,133.99, breaking out of the range it had pressed for two weeks and retaking leadership in the chip group ahead of its results next week; the prior range top near $1,090 is the first level to hold.

Breakdowns

Accenture (ACN) sliced through every moving average to close at $127.98, ground last seen in 2023, with little visible support until the prior cycle's lows in the $120s.

Chevron (CVX) slipped to $173.63, pressing the lower edge of its multi-month range as crude stays near three-month lows; the spring floor near $168 is the next marker down.

Top Movers

Leadership and damage came from opposite ends of the market: the chipmakers powered the advance while the technology-services and bank names did the harm.

Gainers

Intel (INTC) jumped 7.8% to a record $133.99 after President Trump said Apple had agreed to help design and build chips with the company inside the United States. The deal hands Intel's foundry the anchor customer it has lacked, building on the government's 10% stake taken last year and the recent start of its 18A production line, and it reframes a manufacturing push that had trailed Taiwan's TSMC for a decade. The move carried the whole chip group higher and put the domestic-reshoring trade back at the center of the market.

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) rose 5.7% to $462.12 and Micron (MU) added 5.2% to $1,133.99 as the rally fanned out across the semiconductor names, with AI-memory and foundry demand the throughline. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) gained 2.9% to $537.37 in sympathy.

Airlines extended their run on cheaper jet fuel, with United (UAL) up 1.3% to $118.32 and Delta (DAL) up 1.8% to $84.18 as crude stayed near three-month lows despite Thursday's modest bounce.

Losers

Accenture (ACN) collapsed 19.4% to $127.98, its worst session in years, after the consulting giant cut its full-year revenue-growth target to 3% to 4% in local currency and reported its first decline in new bookings in recent memory, at $19.3 billion against $19.7 billion a year earlier. Fiscal third-quarter earnings of $3.80 a share topped estimates and revenue rose 6% to $18.7 billion, but neither counted for much against an order book that is shrinking. The fear underneath the selling is specific: that the same agentic AI Accenture sells to clients is compressing the billable hours its own model rests on, letting customers do more with fewer consultants. Management blamed stalled client decisions and a pullback in federal work, and the selling spread across the services group.

IBM (IBM) fell 5.6% to $249.10, the most direct casualty of Accenture's warning, as investors marked down the legacy IT-services and consulting model across the board.

Kroger (KR) dropped 8.5% to $56.61 even after a headline earnings beat. The grocer posted adjusted earnings of $1.58 a share on $46.1 billion in revenue, but identical sales excluding fuel rose just 1.0%, down sharply from 3.2% a year earlier and at the low end of its own range, and that deceleration is what the market punished. Management reaffirmed full-year guidance of 1% to 2% identical-sales growth.

JPMorgan (JPM) gave back 2.8% to $325.22, surrendering the record-area ground the banks won on Wednesday's curve steepening as the front-end repricing stalled and the ten-year eased. The slide led the financial sector lower and ranked among the heaviest weights on the Dow.

Key Macro Data Today

Thursday's releases lined up behind the Fed's firmer stance.

Claims fell by 4,000 to a level that points to a labor market still tight, and the Philadelphia Fed's factory gauge swung 10.7 points back into expansion. Those are the first numbers in hand since Wednesday's projections, and both argue that the economy can absorb the higher-for-longer path the Fed sketched.

Notable Earnings This Session

Around the holiday the reporting slate thinned to almost nothing, and what little there was came before the open.

Pre-Open

Three names reported before the bell. Accenture set the tone, its guidance cut covered above, and Kroger's comparable-sales miss is detailed in the movers. Jabil (JBL) slipped 2.1% to $371.88 after its own report, an electronics-manufacturing name caught in the same caution that hit the services group.

Post-Close

Nothing of size crossed after the close, and with Wall Street shut Friday for the Juneteenth holiday, the focus shifts to next week. Micron reports the week of June 22, the first big chipmaker to weigh in since the AI trade came roaring back, and the next measure of how broad that demand has become.

What Drove the Tape

Two forces pulled in opposite directions on Thursday, and the buyers had the upper hand. A signed US-Iran accord and the Apple-Intel manufacturing pact sent semiconductors and the reshoring trade sharply higher, lifting Intel 7.8% to a record and carrying the Nasdaq up 1.9%, with the Russell 2000 up 2.1% and the VIX down to the mid-16s. Working against that was Accenture, off 19% in its worst day in years on a guidance cut and a shrinking order book, a drop that pulled IBM and the wider technology-services group down with it and, alongside lower Chevron and JPMorgan, held the Dow to a fractional gain even as Intel climbed. The macro data leaned the hawks' way: jobless claims fell to 226,000 and the Philadelphia Fed factory gauge swung back into expansion, the first hard evidence since Wednesday that the economy can withstand the firmer Fed the projections implied. Yields still eased, with the ten-year slipping to 4.45%, a sign the autumn hike is largely priced and that Thursday turned on the chip story more than the rate story. And with no US session Friday, Thursday's positions must ride a three-day weekend before anyone can act on them.