Stock market today: Dow rises, S&P 500 and Nasdaq slip as oil prices tumble, AI jitters return

Stocks are retreating from their session highs this afternoon, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) pared earlier gains of over 1% to a 0.2% advance, while the Nasdaq (^IXIC) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) slipped into the red.

Once again, tech stocks — particularly semiconductor and memory names — are the culprits.

Shares of Palantir (PLTR), Arm Holdings (ARM), SanDisk (SNDK), Seagate (STX), and Western Digital (WDC) were among the biggest laggards as concerns about artificial intelligence spending and higher borrowing costs resurfaced.

Nvidia (NVDA) saw orderly selling throughout the afternoon and is now off by about 1%. Losses in shares of Micron (MU), which reports results after the bell, accelerated as well.

Micron (MU) shares slipped more than 1% in afternoon trading ahead of the memory chipmaker’s earnings due after the bell.

The company has served as a bellwether for the “bottleneck” segment of AI-driven demand. The stock came under pressure this week, retreating from its all-time highs.

Other memory and storage names also extended losses from the prior session, including Sandisk (SNDK) and Western Digital (WDC).

Semiconductor-related stocks have enjoyed a monstrous rally this year, helping make technology the top-performing sector year to date.

US crude oil stocks at the Cushing, Okla., terminal fell below 20 million barrels last week for the first time in eight years, per EIA data released Wednesday, raising concerns about the tightness of the crude market.

Stores of crude oil at Cushing fell to 18.96 million barrels in the week ended June 19, the EIA said Wednesday, marking the lowest level on record since October 2014 — the peak of the US shale boom as hydraulic fracturing technology transformed Texas’s Permian Basin.

The amount of oil stored at Cushing is critical because that terminal is where NYMEX contracts on US West Texas Intermediate are priced. Because NYMEX contracts represent physical deliveries, tightness in Cushing stocks puts upward pressure on WTI prices as traders evaluate how much oil is available to fulfill those contracts.

“If you own a contract of WTI on expiration, you receive 1,000 barrels of West Texas Intermediate Crude oil from the country’s largest storage facility at Cushing, Oklahoma,” Mizuho director of energy futures Robert Yawger said Wednesday. “If the tanks run dry, that is going to be tough to perform on.”

There are also concerns about operational failures. Much of the oil at Cushing is stored in floating-lid storage tanks, where the lid rises and falls as oil is pumped in and out. Below 20 million barrels, Cushing stores risk breaching contingency stock guarantees for unplanned outages, compromising tank pressure levels, and raising questions about the remaining oil, per Sparta Commodities’ June Goh.

In the wake of the signing of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, contracts on West Texas Intermediate crude, the US benchmark, fell as much as 4.4% on Wednesday to trade below $70 per barrel.

President Trump unexpectedly canceled the signing of a major piece of housing affordability legislation hours before the scheduled ceremony. Trump suggested he won’t sign the bill into law until Congress passes a stalled voter ID bill.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

Yahoo Finance’s Claire Boston reports:

Trump’s support of the bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, has wavered as the House and the Senate negotiated for months over the legislation’s final text. Trump periodically threatened not to sign any other legislation until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a voter identification bill that lacks enough votes to make it through both chambers.

The latest developments leave the first major piece of housing legislation to reach the president’s desk since the financial crisis in limbo after it passed Congress by wide margins and, for now, deny Trump and congressional Republicans a key affordability-related win ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump’s approval rating on economic issues has slumped in recent months, particularly after the war with Iran spiked inflation to a three-year high.

Read more here.

Wendy’s stock surged by about 30% as retail investors rallied around the fast food chain.

In a viral Reddit (RDDT) thread on r/WallStreetBets, investors cited new management, the closure of select stores, China expansion plans, and a potential buyout as their base case.

This follows Tuesday’s announcement that industry veteran Steve Cirulis will be the new CFO, effective immediately, after former Potbelly CEO Bob Wright took the helm in May. Both executives previously worked side by side.

Wendy’s credits the duo with the turnaround at the Potbelly sandwich chain. During their tenure, Potbelly experienced “a more than 500% increase in share price, double-digit growth in average unit volumes, substantial restaurant margin expansion and robust improvement in return on invested capital.”

Potbelly was acquired by convenience chain RaceTrac in October of 2025.

On Tuesday, June 23, the stock closed at $6.26. As of Wednesday, the stock was trading around $8.

Yahoo Finance’s Claire Boston reports:

Sales of newly built homes dropped in May while prices held firm, a fresh sign that poor affordability is still sidelining many would-be buyers.

Sales activity dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 580,000, down nearly 7% from 622,000 a year ago, according to Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development data released on Wednesday. It’s the second straight month of disappointing sales, following a drop in activity in April as well.

New home sales have been uneven this year as buyers continue to grapple with tough affordability conditions and elevated mortgage rates. Homebuilders have continued to offer concessions such as closing-cost assistance, rate buydowns, and upgrade credits to lure buyers into the market. In some cases, they’ve cut prices on their homes altogether.

Read more here.

JPMorgan Chase on Wednesday raised its year-end price target for the S&P 500 (^GSPC) to 7,800 from 7,600 — representing a roughly 6% premium over where the benchmark US equity index now stands.

One of the key drivers, said JPMorgan global head of market strategy Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, has been the resilient performance of earnings, with consensus earnings growth now revised higher to around 20% on average for the next two years as the AI trade has boomed.

“In hindsight, we should have been even more positive on the outlook for S&P 500 earnings growth,” Lakos-Bujas said. “This type of positive revision is unprecedented and is typically seen only after a shock or post-recession.”

Given the slowdown in the Iran war and signing of the memorandum of understanding, as well as the continued strength of the AI trade, the market is “approaching our ‘Blue Sky’ scenario,” Lakos-Bujas said.

Since the beginning of the year, the S&P 500 has returned roughly 7.8%, climbing to 7,373.88 from a close of 6,845.50 on Dec. 31, 2025.

The US stock market started Wednesday with tepid moves as investors look toward Micron (MU) earnings after the bell to reignite the tech trade.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led gains, up 0.5%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) picked up 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) held steady at the flat line.

In focus for investors will be Micron’s earnings report, due after the bell. The memory maker is likely to serve as a key bellwether for the demand side of the AI boom, and traders will be looking for a recovery in the stock price after steep losses on Tuesday.

Cerebras (CBRS), another chipmaker, posted its first earnings report since going public in May, sending shares down 8% afer it said profit margins would be tighter than expected.

In the oil market, Brent crude crossed below $75 per barrel on Wednesday morning for the first time since the war began, as oil began to flow once more.

The price of Brent (BZ=F) oil futures fell below $75 per barrel for the first time since the war began, as pressures in the Persian Gulf continue to abate and oil reaches the market.

The Brent contract is the international benchmark for oil pricing, on which almost all other oil grades are based. Contracts on WTI, the US benchmark, traded near $71 Wednesday morning.

The move on Brent pricing comes after a loss of 27% over the previous month as peace negotiations to end the conflict that has roiled the global energy market came to a head with the signing by the US and Iran of a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

The MOU calls for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and for freedom of navigation for oil tankers and other vessels that have been stuck on either side of the critical waterway. Both US and Iranian leaders have promised safe passage of vessel transits, though some larger shipping lines have elected to wait for a longer period to assess whether the tentative peace agreement holds.

Contrary to expectations in March, the International Energy Agency is now expecting a surplus of oil in the market in 2027, and major banks have begun to bring down their price targets.

Goldman Sachs on Wednesday lowered its Brent price target for the third and fourth quarters to $86 and $80 per barrel, respectively. While contracts currently trade below that level, experts have warned that drawdowns in international reserves could still force prices higher before the global oil system can begin moving crude en masse again.

Elon Musk is no longer a trillionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, losing the singular status a little more than a week after earning it.

According to the index, Musk’s net worth currently stands at $957 billion — still a staggering amount and well above that of the next-richest person in the world, Google co-founder Larry Page, who boasts a $297 billion fortune.

Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last Friday following the debut of his rocket and satellite company, SpaceX (SPCX), his biggest asset. Musk also owns 717 million Tesla (TSLA) shares, not including vested stock options.

SpaceX stock lost 19% over the past five trading days, while Tesla has lost 7% over that period, taking a toll on Musk’s wealth on paper.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke at the Economic Club of New York last night, giving a wide-ranging speech on everything from housing to artificial intelligence.

He noted that he expects inflation to start coming down and that artificial intelligence will at least double productivity.

Yahoo Finance’s Jennifer Schonberger reports:

“Now that we are on the other side of this [Iran] conflict, gas prices will come back down, inflation will come back to target,” Bessent said.

Bessent urged allowing the negotiations with Iran to play out. He argued that Iran still sold its oil to China when the Strait of Hormuz was closed and that it’s better that Tehran is getting a rate of $75 today than 80% of $115 a few weeks ago.

“This is a very conditional performance-based negotiation, and we are offering them carrots, and then there are sticks,” Bessent said of negotiations with Iran.

Read more here.

The “Magnificent Seven” plus Broadcom (AVGO) and Oracle (ORCL) have lost roughly $2.7 trillion in market value in June, according to Yahoo Finance analysis, as investors take a harder look at the companies funding the AI build-out.

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre lays it out in today’s Chart of the Day.

Initially, this month’s reset focused on the Magnificent Seven. Now the pressure captures Broadcom and Oracle — two names closely tied to the AI infrastructure build-out.

The reset cuts across both sides of the AI complex.

Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom are tied to the hardware boom. Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Oracle are tied to the spending boom. Apple (AAPL) and Tesla (TSLA) remain part of the megacap growth trade investors have treated as an AI-adjacent proxy.

The market is putting a price on the cost of the build-out.

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

SK Hynix Inc. (000660.KS) is looking to raise 45.45 trillion won ($29.4 billion) by selling depositary receipts on the Nasdaq exchange.

The company expects trading to start on July 10, according to a statement on Wednesday.

SK Hynix controlled 57% of the global market share by revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to data from Counterpoint Research. The firm, however, trades at a discount to both Micron (MU) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS, SSNLF).

The insatiable demand for memory chips has fueled breakneck rallies in these stocks, with SK Hynix stock listed in Seoul climbing more than 300% this year.

… A US listing would give the company access to a fresh pool of investors and could help SK Hynix narrow a gap in its valuation compared with its competitors.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré reports:

Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) on June 29, replacing Verizon Communications (VZ) in a move aimed at better reflecting growing areas of the US economy.

Alphabet’s inclusion will “broaden and strengthen the DJIA’s exposure” to areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, healthcare technology, and digital advertising said the S&P Dow Jones Indices statement.

The release noted that Alphabet’s “larger market capitalization and share price, together with the breadth of its businesses,” make it a stronger representative of the Communication Services (XLC) sector.

Because the Dow is weighted by stock price, Verizon’s lower-priced shares contribute relatively little to the index’s performance. Verizon shares are up roughly 14% year-to-date.

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

Gold (GC=F) extended a decline, as a tech-led selloff on Wall Street prompted investors to cut bullion holdings to cover losses elsewhere in their portfolios.

Spot gold dropped below $4,100 an ounce, after giving up 1.7% in the previous session for its lowest close in two weeks. Treasuries rallied on Tuesday and a gauge of the dollar rose 0.4%, making gold that’s priced in the US currency more expensive for most buyers.

While gold is known as a haven investment, it often falls during big cross-market selloffs as it functions as a source of liquidity. Stocks in Asia were poised to extend losses on Wednesday on concerns that the AI-driven equity rally has run too far.

The tech slump has heaped further pressure on gold, which is already weighed down by concern that lingering inflation risks mean the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates. The hawkish tone adopted by new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has jolted investors and offset the positive impact from an interim US-Iran peace deal signed last week. Higher borrowing costs are a headwind for non-yielding precious metals.

Read more here.