Indexes

Wall Street spent Wednesday trying to shake off the week's selling in chip stocks and very nearly managed it, only to watch the rally drain away in the final hour. The S&P 500 had been higher by about 0.7% near midday, trading up to roughly 7,420, before fading to a 7,358.22 close, lower by a tenth of a percent. The Dow held its advance, adding 182 points to 51,848.90, and the Russell 2000 finished up 0.37% at 2,986.63, while the technology indexes again surrendered the most ground. The session that mattered came after the bell, when Micron reported.

The shape of the close told the story: the Dow and the small caps held green while the Nasdaq slipped, a market sorting winners by who gains from cheaper oil and lower yields rather than by size. Volatility eased, with the VIX back to 18.63. That afternoon calm proved to be only a setup for the evening, and the after-hours move in Micron would end up reframing the entire week.

Sector Heat Map

Money rotated toward the groups that lower oil and lower borrowing costs help, and away from the artificial-intelligence spenders and energy.

Consumer discretionary led at +1.38% and utilities followed at +1.17%, an uncommon pairing of offense and defense whose common thread was the drop in oil and Treasury yields. Energy was the weakest group at -1.60% as crude collapsed, and technology and communications lagged as the AI-spending names kept resetting.

In the News

Drivers

1. Wednesday's record from Micron, and an even bigger outlook for the current quarter, reframe the chip group's week and argue that AI-memory demand is still tightening. Whether Nvidia, Broadcom and the equipment makers follow it higher, or the AI-spending reset that hit Oracle and Microsoft keeps a lid on them, is the first read at Thursday's open. The conference-call commentary on high-bandwidth memory pricing and those new multi-year customer agreements will set the tone for the whole space.
2. Thursday brings the May reading on the inflation gauge the Federal Reserve prizes most. Economists expect a monthly rise of roughly half a percent and a core annual pace close to 3.4 percent; with Chair Kevin Warsh leaning hawkish and Bank of America forecasting three increases this year, a cooler-than-feared result would sway markets more than the firmer outcome most investors expect, all the more so with crude sliding.
3. Oil is the other thread. The energy agency now sees a 2027 surplus and Goldman has trimmed its forecasts, and with barrels flowing again, cheaper crude keeps easing the inflation math heading into that report.

S&P 500 fund (SPY), daily: the midday bounce that faded to a lower finish, still holding above the rising 50-day average.

Micron (MU), daily: the regular session went nowhere into a record report that lifted the stock after the bell.

Uber (UBER), daily: a breakout to a new high, the clearest beneficiary of falling oil and steadier risk appetite.

US Oil Fund (USO), daily: crude's drop to pre-war levels as barrels return through the Strait of Hormuz.

Rates, FX, Commodities

Crude's slide to pre-war prices pulled the whole Treasury curve lower as the inflation worry that had driven yields up all month lost some of its force.

The ten-year's nine-basis-point drop to 4.40% outpaced the two-year, narrowing the gap between them to about 26 basis points and flattening the curve a touch from a day earlier.

Brent fell more than 4% to $73.18, its first finish below $75 since before the war with Iran began, as tankers resumed crossing the Strait of Hormuz and the International Energy Agency pointed to a 2027 surplus; Goldman Sachs cut its Brent targets for the next two quarters, per Reuters. Gold dropped 2.7% to $4,016.10, a two-week low, as the firmer dollar and the calmer inflation picture sapped the haven bid, Bloomberg reported. The energy and metals levels here were pulled live after Wednesday's close.

Technicals

At 7,358.22 the S&P 500 sits below the 20-day moving average it has not reclaimed since the chip selling started, with the rising 50-day near 7,320 the first support that counts; a close beneath it would put the early-June breakout zone back in play. The Nasdaq 100 remains the weaker chart, still capped by its 20- and 50-day lines after this week's damage. In rates, the ten-year's pullback to 4.40% set it near the lower end of where it has traded this month, and a sustained drop under 4.35% would signal a cleaner downside break as the oil-driven relief on inflation filters through. The session's sharpest decline among the large caps belonged to Oracle, whose steady intraday breakdown is shown below.

Oracle, hourly: a one-way slide through the day as the AI-spending names reset, closing near the lows.

Breakouts & Breakdowns

Breakouts

Broadcom (AVGO) closed at $382.07, higher by 0.1% and the only large artificial-intelligence name to finish green, defending the low-$380s shelf it has held all week; a stable hold here would be an early sign the chip selling is steadying.

Amazon (AMZN) added 0.3% to $234.27, staying above the $230 area while the rest of big tech slipped, a quiet show of relative strength rather than a fresh breakout.

Breakdowns

Microsoft (MSFT) fell 2.3% to $365.46, closing under the $370 shelf that had supported it since early June; the next floor is the month's low near $355.

Marvell (MRVL) lost 1.5% to $276.70, slipping back beneath the $280 level it had reclaimed last week, which leaves the May base near $260 as the next support.

Top Movers

With big tech soft, the day's largest gains came from housing, a meme rally and the rotation winners, while the AI spenders and a freshly public chipmaker led the decliners.

Gainers

Wendy's (WEN) soared 25.7% to $7.86 as retail traders piled in, rallying around store closures, China expansion plans and takeover chatter on Reddit's WallStreetBets. The push also followed news that CEO Bob Wright and incoming finance chief Steve Cirulis, who ran a turnaround together at Potbelly, are now both at the burger chain.

KB Home (KBH) jumped about 17% to $61.51 after its quarterly results landed well and the day's drop in oil and mortgage rates revived the homebuilders; smaller housing and solar names such as Sunrun and Rocket Companies climbed alongside it.

Uber Technologies (UBER) rose 5.8% to $73.85 to a fresh high, the clearest winner of the move out of expensive technology and into the names that benefit from cheaper fuel.

Losers

Oracle (ORCL) fell 4.9% to $157.53, leading lower the companies funding the AI build-out as investors kept questioning the returns on all that spending. Per Yahoo Finance, the megacap technology leaders plus Broadcom and Oracle have shed roughly $2.7 trillion in market value this month, and Oracle, only recently lumped in with the heaviest spenders, has taken an outsized hit. Its chart broke through the week's lows, the move pictured in the Technicals section above.

Cerebras Systems (CBRS) dropped 9.4% to $182.26, still sliding from its first report since going public in May, delivered the evening before, when the AI-chip maker guided to thinner profit margins than analysts had modeled.

Qualcomm (QCOM) slid 3.3% to $197.41, losing the $200 line with the rest of the chipmakers in the session ahead of Micron's results.

Key Macro Data Today

Wednesday's only notable US release disappointed, and the week's main event is still ahead on Thursday.

New home sales fell 7.3% to a 580,000 annual pace, well under the 632,000 economists expected and the second straight monthly decline, as high prices and elevated mortgage rates kept buyers on the sidelines. The homebuilders rallied anyway, a fair sign that for those stocks the move in mortgage rates counted for more than the month's actual sales.

Notable Earnings This Session

Wednesday's earnings calendar was back-loaded to the evening, and to a single name.

Pre-Open

No major companies reported before the open.

Post-Close

Micron (MU) was the main event, and it delivered a record. The memory maker, which had slipped 0.3% in the regular session to $1,048.51, reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $41.46 billion against expectations near $35.8 billion, with adjusted earnings of $25.11 a share versus about $20.40 expected and a gross margin of 84.9%. Core data-center revenue rose more than sevenfold from a year ago to $11.5 billion. Management guided current-quarter revenue to roughly $50 billion, far above the $43 billion Wall Street had penciled in, pointed to margins near 86%, declared a $0.15 dividend, and cited new multi-year customer agreements that chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra said reflect "the strategic value of memory in the AI era." The stock climbed about 6% in late trading, unwinding much of Tuesday's 13% drop.

What Drove the Tape

A rebound from the week's chip selling carried into early afternoon, then leaked away as the AI-spending names refused to recover and Oracle led them lower. The bigger forces were elsewhere: oil fell about 4% to its lowest since before the Iran war as crude resumed flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, and Treasury yields dropped across the curve, the ten-year easing to 4.40%. That combination sent money into homebuilders, consumer names and other rate-sensitive groups, while energy shares and the megacap spenders lagged and gold slipped to a two-week low. A week that opened with a memory scare out of Seoul then closed with a record from the company at the center of it, as Micron's blowout results and a far-stronger-than-expected outlook landed after the bell. That report handed the chip group its first piece of unambiguously good news all week.