Markets News, June 4, 2026: Dow Soars 875 Points to Record Close; S&P 500 Overcomes Broadcom-Led Tech Pullback; Oil Retreats

The Dow Jones Industrial Average set new intraday and closing records on Thursday, June 4, 2026. The gains came from healthcare and financial stocks, while the artificial intelligence chip trade that had carried much of the market in recent months sold off. The split explains why the three major indexes told such different stories. The blue-chip Dow posted its largest gain of the group, the S&P 500 returned to gains a day after its nine-session winning streak ended, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped.

This recap covers what drove each index, the company news behind the biggest moves, what happened in oil, bonds, currencies, gold and crypto, and the reports investors were positioning for.

Why the Dow Rose While Tech Fell

The Dow’s record came from UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Merck (MRK), each of which gained roughly 5%. None of them is a chip company, and none depends heavily on the AI hardware cycle. On a day when money moved out of semiconductors and into other parts of the market, the Dow benefited from that rotation.

The breadth inside the S&P 500 shows the same pattern. The benchmark tracks 11 sectors. Information Technology was by far the weakest of them on Thursday, and nine of the other 10 finished higher. Losses concentrated in one heavily weighted sector can hold back a broad index even when most of its stocks are rising. That is why the S&P 500 gained only modestly despite widespread advances elsewhere.

The tech selloff was also narrower than the Nasdaq’s dip might suggest. All of the Magnificent Seven megacaps finished higher except Tesla (TSLA). Most of the damage came from chipmakers and other AI hardware names: Broadcom (AVGO), Arm Holdings (ARM), Micron Technology (MU) and peers, along with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD) after its earnings report. Several large platform companies held up, which kept the Nasdaq’s decline small.

Bitunix analyst Dean Chen described the backdrop in written commentary. Markets are dealing with geopolitical tensions, tariff restructuring, a realignment of energy supply chains and an expanding AI investment cycle all at once, he said, and the risk of heavy concentration in any single sector or asset class is rising as a result. Thursday’s session illustrated the point: portfolios concentrated in AI semiconductors had a very different day from those holding insurers, banks and drugmakers.

The Dow’s construction amplified the rotation. It holds 30 large U.S. companies and is price-weighted, so a stock with a high share price moves it more than one with a low share price, whatever the size of the two companies. UnitedHealth traded near $396 during the session, and Goldman Sachs also carries a high share price, so gains of around 5% in stocks like these add many points. Meanwhile, Broadcom, the day’s biggest drag on the Nasdaq, is not a Dow component, and chip stocks make up a much smaller share of the Dow’s weighting than of the cap-weighted Nasdaq’s.

UnitedHealth Leads After a Bank of America Upgrade

UnitedHealth was the Dow’s standout after Bank of America analysts upgraded the insurer to “buy” and raised their price target to $450 from $420. The shares rose more than 5% in Thursday trading.

The upgrade addresses the issue that has hurt UnitedHealth’s results for several quarters: medical costs. When patients use more care than an insurer priced into its premiums, the medical cost ratio rises and margins shrink. Higher-than-expected costs had weighed on the company’s recent results. The Bank of America team now sees signs that medical cost trends and insurance utilization are improving, which would leave a more favorable setup for second-quarter results.

The analysts also took up a skeptical reading of the company’s first quarter. Some investors had attributed the strong first-quarter numbers to temporary factors, mainly a weak flu season and storms that may have kept people away from doctors. The analysts said the incoming data points make it harder to believe the quarter was purely a result of those factors. If the improvement reflects a real change in cost trends rather than a one-off, it could support further upside in the stock.

Broadcom Sinks Despite Beating Estimates

Broadcom’s quarterly results and guidance topped Wall Street’s expectations. The stock still fell nearly 15% during the session and closed roughly 13% lower, leading decliners on the Nasdaq.

The reaction came down to expectations more than results. Broadcom forecast third-quarter revenue of $29.4 billion, ahead of estimates, but left its long-term forecasts unchanged. After a run of strong reports from other semiconductor companies, some investors had hoped Broadcom would raise its long-term outlook as well. William Blair analysts said the market may have wanted a new target beyond the company’s earlier forecast of more than $100 billion in AI chip sales next year. Without that update, a beat on the current numbers was not enough.

The analysts still said they remain confident that Broadcom can keep up its strong growth trajectory. But Broadcom had rallied to record highs recently and was up close to 40% for the year through Wednesday’s close, so the bar was high going into the report.

The selling spread to other chip stocks. Marvell Technology (MRVL), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Nvidia (NVDA), Intel (INTC) and Arm Holdings traded lower during the session. Arm finished down about 4.5%. Investors often use one company’s guidance to judge demand across the group, so a cautious long-term message from a major AI chip supplier can affect valuations throughout the industry. Nvidia, the exception among large chipmakers, ended the day higher along with most of its Magnificent Seven peers.

Memory Stocks Pull Back After a Historic Run

Micron fell about 8% on Thursday, one of the steepest declines among AI-linked stocks. The drop followed a rally that had made memory chipmakers the market’s best performers this year.

A day earlier, Morgan Stanley analysts had argued that the run in memory stocks may not be over. In a note to clients on Wednesday, the firm, which rates both Micron and Sandisk (SNDK) “overweight,” said there is “no quick fix” for the memory shortage caused by AI demand. It expects the shortage could last another two to three years. Both companies are investing to expand supply, but Morgan Stanley expects demand could keep outpacing supply in the near term, which could support rising memory prices over the next few quarters.

The analysts raised their price targets, but both stocks were already above them. Sandisk jumped nearly 7% on Wednesday to a record close above $1,831, past Morgan Stanley’s new $1,750 target. Micron rose 1.5% that day to a high above $1,079, ahead of its $1,050 target. From the start of the year through that point, Micron shares had nearly quadrupled and Sandisk had climbed about 670%, the two best performances in the S&P 500 in 2026.

Thursday’s decline shows the risk that comes with gains of that size. A stock that has risen several hundred percent in five months reflects high expectations, and a disappointment elsewhere in the semiconductor group, such as Broadcom’s unchanged long-term outlook, can set off selling even without bad news from the company itself. The bull case Morgan Stanley described is about supply and demand over several quarters, while daily price moves reflect how crowded the trade has become.

Dell’s Rally Lifts Michael Dell up the Wealth Rankings

Dell Technologies (DELL) has been one of the clearest winners of the AI server boom. Its shares gained nearly a third of their value after the company reported better-than-expected earnings late last week. The stock has more than tripled this year as sales of its AI servers have surged.

The rally has had a large effect on Michael Dell’s fortune. His net worth rose $37 billion to $233 billion through Wednesday’s close, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That made him the world’s sixth-richest person, ahead of Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Most of his estimated wealth comes from his roughly 40% stake in the company, so his net worth closely follows the stock.

Dell also has a link to Thursday’s biggest loser. He reportedly holds a sizable stake in Broadcom, which he acquired through the sale of VMware. Dell spun off VMware in 2021, and Broadcom bought VMware for $69 billion in 2023. That transaction is part of why Broadcom’s results and its stock price matter to Dell’s personal wealth as well as to the chip sector.

Dell has also drawn a high-profile show of support from the Trump administration. Late last year, the CEO announced billions of dollars in donations to support Trump Accounts for children.

CrowdStrike Falls After Results, Announces a Stock Split

CrowdStrike reported first-quarter revenue of $1.39 billion and adjusted earnings of $1.10 per share, slightly ahead of analyst expectations. The stock fell 7.5% at one point and finished about 4% lower.

The setup was similar to Broadcom’s. CrowdStrike shares had rallied to record highs before the report, so a modest beat did little for investors who had already pushed the stock up about 48% for the year. A small upside surprise may not be enough when a company is priced for strong outperformance.

The longer-term story for cybersecurity has improved. Analysts have argued that AI developments are more likely to increase spending on cybersecurity than to replace the industry with AI tools, because more automated systems and more data create more to protect. That argument helped the sector’s rally this year.

CrowdStrike also announced a 4-for-1 stock split, to take effect early next month. Each existing share becomes four shares and the price per share falls to roughly a quarter of its previous level, so the company’s value and each shareholder’s stake are unchanged.

AI Spending Enters a More Capital-Intensive Phase

Thursday’s chip selloff came as investors debated whether the huge wave of AI spending that has driven markets is starting to change character. Alphabet (GOOG) gave them a notable data point earlier in the week. On Monday, it announced a plan to sell $80 billion of stock to fund its AI infrastructure and meet what it called “unprecedented customer demand” for computing power.

It is unusual for one of the world’s most profitable companies to issue stock instead of paying for expansion from cash flow. According to CEO Sundar Pichai, the first $40 billion phase of the offering was “well over-subscribed,” which allowed Alphabet to sell nearly $5 billion more than planned this week. About $30 billion of the proceeds is set aside for taxes. The rest will go toward building, equipping and powering AI data centers.

The amounts involved are very large. Alphabet expects to invest between $180 billion and $190 billion in AI infrastructure in 2026, and it forecasts that spending will “significantly increase” next year. Together, Alphabet and its hyperscaler peers Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta and Oracle (ORCL) are on track to spend more than $700 billion on capital expenditures this year.

Analysts at BCA Research said on Tuesday that the move to equity funding suggests the AI capital spending cycle is entering a more mature and capital-intensive phase, one in which even cash-rich hyperscalers are turning to outside capital. For markets, this has two sides. Continued spending supports revenue for chipmakers, server builders and power suppliers. But a cycle that needs outside financing raises questions about returns on that capital and about how long spending can keep growing. A more measured spending path could reduce the risk of overbuilding while also lowering the growth expectations built into chip stocks. That tension helps explain why investors reacted so strongly to Broadcom’s decision not to raise its long-term targets.

SpaceX Reveals Key IPO Details

Investors waiting for the SpaceX initial public offering got the most detailed information yet late Wednesday. In a regulatory filing, Elon Musk’s company said it expects to sell 555,555,555 shares at $135 each, raising about $75 billion. The shares are intended to trade under the ticker “SPCX.” The filing followed news reports that had first included those details.

A $75 billion raise would be the largest IPO in history. The pricing implies a valuation of about $1.75 trillion, which would place SpaceX near the top of the S&P 500’s membership by market value right after listing. The company has not said exactly when the IPO will take place, but reports indicate it could happen as soon as next week.

The structure is unusual. Companies normally market an IPO with a price range and set the final price only a day or so before trading starts, after gauging demand from institutional investors. SpaceX disclosed a single price in advance. A report citing people close to the deal said the fixed price was meant to simplify the process while the company markets the offering. A single disclosed price leaves less room to adjust for demand, so watch whether the terms change before the listing.

SpaceX may be the first of several very large listings. Anthropic, which raised money last month at a private valuation approaching $1 trillion, has said it is moving closer to an IPO and has filed confidentially with the SEC. Investors are also watching for a possible OpenAI offering. Deals of this size could draw a lot of investor interest and possibly pull money from other assets, as buyers look to own companies seen as leading the market in the second half of 2026. Investors have already shown interest in space-themed exchange-traded funds.

Apple Heads Into Its Developer Conference Near Records

Apple (AAPL) has been one of the stronger megacaps this year. Through Wednesday’s close, the stock was up about 14% since the start of the year, ahead of the S&P 500, and had recently reached records above $315. It closed Thursday around $310.

The next test is Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts Monday. The company is expected to introduce several AI features, including an upgraded Siri that investors and customers have been waiting for since Apple first announced it at WWDC in 2024. JPMorgan analysts said they expect a redesigned Siri with new capabilities, possibly along with a standalone Siri chatbot app that would compete with ChatGPT and Claude.

Bank of America raised its price target to $380 from $330 before the event. Both figures are above the Visible Alpha mean of analyst targets, which is near $322. The bank’s argument is about where value builds up as AI agents become more capable. In its view, the company that owns the device and platform where agents run will become more valuable than the company that supplies the model behind them. With the iPhone’s large installed base, Apple could benefit if it makes Siri a leading AI agent.

That argument differs from the chip trade that sold off Thursday. It treats Apple as a distribution platform for AI rather than a buyer of AI hardware, which is one reason some large tech stocks held up while semiconductor suppliers fell.

Oil Retreats on Ceasefire News

Crude prices, which had risen earlier in the week, fell after Israel and Lebanon announced they would renew their ceasefire agreement. A Wall Street Journal report added to the easing of tension. It said President Donald Trump had told aides he would not resume all-out war with Iran unless American troops were killed.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude benchmark, fell nearly 3% to $93.20 a barrel as of 4 p.m. ET. Front-month Brent crude, the global benchmark, settled down 2.8% at $95.03.

The decline gave some relief to a market where energy costs have become a central concern. Oil has been the main channel through which the Middle East conflict has affected the U.S. economy, through fuel prices and also through the cost of moving goods. Lower crude prices ease part of that pressure, though prices around $93 to $95 a barrel remain high enough to keep inflation concerns in place.

The Beige Book Raises Inflation Warnings

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, released Wednesday, put those energy concerns into the central bank’s own record. The report collects anecdotal information from the Fed’s business contacts across its 12 districts. This edition was full of complaints about rising costs. Contacts pointed to higher fuel prices linked to the Iran war and the effects spreading through the economy.

The most important detail for inflation was pass-through. The report said higher transportation costs from fuel prices are being passed on into the prices of other products, and businesses that are not raising prices are absorbing the cost through lower profits. Either outcome matters. Pass-through pushes inflation beyond energy into a wider range of goods, and squeezed margins can eventually lead to price increases, job cuts or weaker earnings.

This is significant because Fed officials have become more concerned in recent months about the war’s effect on prices. Some have warned that the central bank may need to raise its benchmark interest rate to control inflation. A rate increase would reverse the easing that markets had hoped for, and the Beige Book gives officials who favor tighter policy anecdotal evidence to support their case.

Thursday’s drop in oil prices eases the short-term picture somewhat. But the Beige Book describes conditions over the weeks before its release, and pass-through effects tend to work their way through prices over months, so one day’s decline in crude does not settle the Fed’s concerns.

Treasury Yields, the Dollar and Gold

The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgage rates and how investors value companies’ future earnings, edged lower from Wednesday’s close. A small decline after a jump in rate-hike concerns suggests the bond market was not adding to the inflation scare on Thursday, helped in part by lower oil prices.

The U.S. dollar index, which measures the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, fell 0.1% to 99.43. Gold futures rose 0.9% to above $4,500 an ounce. Gold above $4,500 shows how much investors have been willing to pay for assets seen as hedges against geopolitical risk and inflation during this period.

Bitcoin Falls Toward Its 2026 Low

Crypto had a much worse day than stocks. Bitcoin traded around $63,300 Thursday afternoon, its lowest level since February. It had briefly dropped below $62,000 overnight, close to the 2026 lows set in February, according to data firm Messari. The cryptocurrency is down roughly 30% for the year, a sharp contrast with U.S. stocks, which have performed relatively well.

The week’s selling showed up in several measures. Spot bitcoin funds had net outflows for 13 straight trading days, which pushed their year-to-date net flows negative, according to Farside Investors data. In the derivatives market, crypto saw its largest liquidation event since October, according to Fundstrat, and forced sales of leveraged positions can push prices lower and trigger more liquidations.

Even analysts who are optimistic about bitcoin over the long term were not ruling out more short-term losses. The gap between bitcoin and the Dow’s record also weakens the argument that the two trade as one risk-on asset. On Thursday, stock investors were buying healthcare and financials while crypto holders were selling.

What Comes Next: The May Jobs Report

Investors’ attention turns to Friday’s May employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expect employers added 80,000 jobs in May, down from 115,000 in April. April’s gain was more than double what economists had forecast. The unemployment rate is expected to stay at 4.3%, which is low by historical standards.

If the report matches expectations, it would be the third straight month of job gains, the first such run since early 2025. That would reverse the pattern of late 2025 and the start of this year, when the economy lost jobs in several months as uncertainty discouraged hiring. Forecasters expect most of the new jobs to come from education and healthcare, as in recent reports. Some economists expect job growth to continue through the rest of the year.

The report comes at a sensitive time for the Fed. With the Beige Book pointing to cost pass-through and officials discussing a possible rate increase, a much stronger-than-expected jobs number could strengthen the case for tightening. A weak number would complicate it. The market’s reaction will depend on how the result compares with the 80,000 forecast more than on whether the economy added jobs.