Markets News, June 26, 2026: S&P 500, Nasdaq Post Weekly Losses as Tech Sell-Off Continues

The Nasdaq today closed out its worst week in a month. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite fell in every session from Monday through Friday. The Nasdaq lost 4.6% for the week, and the S&P 500 gave up 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went the other way, finishing the week up 0.6% for its third straight weekly gain. For anyone asking whether U.S. markets dropped in late June 2026, that split is the answer: the selling was concentrated in technology and communications stocks, while defensive sectors and the Dow’s older-economy members held up.

Friday’s damage came mostly from a single report. Late Thursday, The New York Times said OpenAI may push its initial public offering into next year. Investors read that as another sign that appetite for AI-linked stocks is fading, and memory and chip stocks gave back the gains they had made after Micron’s earnings a day earlier. The rest of this coverage follows the day’s main threads: the IPO pipeline, the rotation into defensive sectors, crypto’s slide toward $60,000, the outlook for interest rates, and individual company moves in prediction markets, space launch and semiconductors.

A Losing Week for Tech, a Winning Week for the Dow

The Nasdaq’s 4.6% drop was its second-largest weekly decline in the past year. The only bigger one was a 4.7% fall three weeks earlier, so the index has now suffered two steep weekly losses within roughly a month. For the S&P 500, a 2% weekly decline is less dramatic. It still marks five consecutive down sessions, which says the selling was persistent rather than a single shock.

The Dow’s gain shows how narrow the sell-off was. The blue-chip index has less exposure to the chipmakers and memory producers that drove the week’s losses, and it includes healthcare, consumer staples and industrial companies that benefited when investors moved out of growth stocks. When the Dow rises while the Nasdaq posts one of its worst weeks of the year, the market is usually rotating between sectors rather than selling across the board.

Small caps also held steady on Friday. That fits a week in which the pressure came from the largest technology names and from stocks most closely tied to the AI investment theme, not from a broad loss of confidence in the economy.

How Friday Unfolded

The day started weak for tech. In premarket trading, futures tied to the Nasdaq 100 pointed to an open about 1% lower, while Dow futures were up 0.1%. The gap between the two set the pattern for the session: technology under pressure, the rest of the market roughly flat.

The OpenAI report was the main overnight news. It landed after a Thursday on which memory stocks had rallied on Micron’s quarterly results while the Magnificent Seven megacaps fell. On Friday the roles reversed. Memory and chip stocks sold off, and most of the megacaps recovered some of Thursday’s losses. The indexes ended the day with small declines, which completed the week’s run of down sessions for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq.

Japan’s SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s largest backers, fell 12% in Tokyo on Friday. That was the most direct market reaction to the possibility that OpenAI’s listing could slip.

Memory and Chip Stocks Gave Back Thursday’s Rally

Micron had reported another very strong quarter, and memory stocks rallied on Thursday as a result. A day later, those gains reversed. Western Digital (WDC) dropped 13%, Seagate Technology (STX) lost 12%, Sandisk (SNDK) fell 10%, and Micron (MU) itself declined 7%.

The broader chip group fell too, though less sharply. Broadcom (AVGO) slid 4%, Intel (INTC) lost 3%, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) fell 2%.

The size of these moves reflects what memory stocks had come to represent. Demand for memory and storage has been tied to the buildout of AI data centers, so news that the most prominent private AI company might delay going public hit the group as a verdict on the whole trade, even though an IPO delay does not directly change memory orders. Any stock that has rallied on a theme can fall quickly when sentiment around that theme weakens, regardless of what its own latest earnings showed.

Megacaps Mostly Recovered

The Magnificent Seven, which had dragged on the market Thursday, mostly rose on Friday. Microsoft (MSFT) led with a 6% gain. Apple (AAPL) climbed 3%, recovering part of a Thursday drop that was its worst day in more than a year. That Thursday decline followed Apple’s decision to raise prices on some products to offset soaring memory costs, which connects the megacap and memory stories: the same memory price increases that help Micron and its peers raise costs for device makers.

Amazon (AMZN) rose 2%, and Tesla (TSLA) and Meta (META) each gained more than 1%. Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOG) were the exceptions, each falling about 2%.

For the week, the megacaps were still a heavy drag. Alphabet lost 7% and Meta 5% over the five sessions, which explains much of the communications sector’s decline.

Defensive Sectors Led as Tech and Communications Slid

Investors wanted safety this week. Healthcare stocks led all sectors, climbing more than 7%. Real estate and utilities each gained about 3.5%, and consumer staples rose 1.6%. No other sector gained more than 1%.

Healthcare, utilities and consumer staples are the sectors investors tend to favor when anxiety is high or when they expect growth to slow. Demand for medicine, electricity and household goods holds up in weaker economies, and these companies tend to pay relatively large, stable dividends. That makes them an alternative to bonds when Treasury yields fall, as they did this week. Real estate behaves in a similar way, since its income streams and financing costs are sensitive to interest rates.

At the bottom of the table, communications fell 5.5% and technology fell 5.2%. Consumer discretionary stocks lost nearly 3%.

The tech sector’s decline came in an unusual alternating pattern. On Monday, megacaps such as Apple and Microsoft sold off while chip stocks rallied. On Tuesday, chips sold off and the Magnificent Seven stabilized. Wednesday was bad for both groups. Thursday repeated Monday, and Friday repeated Tuesday. The two halves of tech kept trading places, but because neither group rallied enough on its good days to offset the other’s losses, the sector ended the week sharply lower.

Why the Dow Can Rise While the Nasdaq Falls

The three major indexes measure different things, which is why they diverged so widely this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks 30 large U.S. companies and is price-weighted. A stock with a higher share price has more influence on the index than one with a lower price, regardless of how large the company is. Its membership spans healthcare, financials, industrials, consumer brands and some technology. It does not move one-for-one with the AI trade.

The S&P 500 covers about 500 large U.S. companies and is weighted by market capitalization, so the biggest companies carry the most weight. Because the largest U.S. companies today are mostly technology and communications firms, the S&P 500 is heavily exposed to the megacaps, though less so than the Nasdaq. For a closer look at the benchmark, the S&P 500 index page tracks its price and performance.

The Nasdaq Composite includes nearly all common stocks listed on the Nasdaq exchange and is also market-cap weighted. Technology dominates the exchange, so the Composite is the most direct gauge of how tech is trading. The Nasdaq 100, a separate index of the 100 largest non-financial companies on the exchange, underlies the futures contracts and many of the funds that traders use to bet on tech.

In a week like this one, when money moves from chips and megacaps into healthcare and utilities, these construction differences determine which index wins. The Nasdaq absorbs the full impact of the tech sell-off, the S&P 500 takes a diluted version, and the Dow can rise if its defensive members gain enough.

OpenAI Weighs Delaying Its IPO, and SpaceX Is a Big Reason

Investors who had expected to buy shares of OpenAI this year may have to wait. According to The New York Times, the company behind ChatGPT is considering postponing its listing until next year, after watching SpaceX’s stock slump within weeks of its record IPO. OpenAI had been expected to go public in the second half of this year and confidentially filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month.

Private companies prefer to list when markets are calm and buyers are eager, because strong demand supports a higher offering price and a solid first day of trading. Sentiment around new AI-related stocks has shifted. SpaceX recently traded around $157, slightly above its $150 opening price and about 30% below its intraday peak near $225. The decline also cost founder and CEO Elon Musk his status as a trillionaire.

SpaceX is not the only recent listing to struggle. AI chipmaker Cerebras (CBRS), which was this year’s largest IPO before SpaceX debuted, has fallen 50% from its opening price, recently trading near $173. Its first quarterly results as a public company appeared to disappoint investors, roughly a month after its May debut.

A delay by OpenAI could make other companies hesitate. Rival AI startup Anthropic confidentially filed to go public earlier this month, and the IPO calendar for the rest of the year depends on whether early buyers of these deals are making or losing money. Some companies are also believed to have considered delaying offerings out of concern that a few very large deals would absorb available investor demand.

SpaceX Two Weeks After Its Record Debut

Two weeks after its June 12 debut, SpaceX (SPCX) is trading close to where it started. The stock recorded its lowest close since listing on Thursday and rose modestly on Friday. It is still more than 30% below its record high.

Each price level means something different for investors:

• $135 was the IPO price, what investors who received shares in the offering paid. SpaceX remains well above it.
• $150 was the first trade on the open market, so buyers on day one have barely broken even.
• Above $225 was the post-debut peak, and anyone who bought near that level is down sharply.

SpaceX’s market value was about $2 trillion at Thursday’s close, after it came close to $3 trillion in its first few days of trading.

The stock’s swings have become one of the market’s central themes because they test the public’s appetite for very large new listings, especially in artificial intelligence, which is one of SpaceX’s businesses. The next potential catalyst is index inclusion. When a major index adds a stock, the funds that track it must buy shares, which creates demand. The Nasdaq 100 is seen as among the likeliest to announce that it will add SpaceX. Five companies, including Rocket Lab, joined the Nasdaq 100 this week in its quarterly rebalancing.

Palantir Looks Set to End a Seven-Day Losing Streak

Palantir (PLTR) was one of the best performers in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on Friday, rising about 4.5% to around $112 in afternoon trading. That put it on course for its first gain after seven straight declines, which had pushed the shares to their lowest level since last April.

Some prominent investors bought the dip. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest purchased more than 30,500 Palantir shares on Thursday across three of its flagship exchange-traded funds, according to trade notifications. ARK, known for betting on disruptive technology, has also been adding shares of Cerebras and of crypto-related companies Coinbase (COIN) and Circle Internet Group (CRCL) as bitcoin has struggled.

Even with Friday’s bounce, Palantir has lost more than a third of its value since the start of the year. Two concerns have weighed on it: worries that its valuation runs ahead of its fundamentals, and a broader pullback in software stocks on fears that AI could disrupt existing business models.

Wall Street analysts remain mostly positive. Of the six analysts with current ratings tracked by Visible Alpha, four rate the stock a buy and two are neutral. Their mean price target of about $202 implies a rebound of nearly 80%, which would bring the shares back near their November highs. A price target is an analyst’s estimate, not a forecast the market has agreed to, and the gap between the target and the current price shows how far sentiment has moved from analysts’ assumptions.

Bitcoin Fights for $60,000, and Strategy Feels the Pressure

Bitcoin fell Thursday to levels last seen in 2024, dropping to around $58,000 according to Messari before recovering to roughly $60,000 on Friday and trading near $59,600 late in the afternoon. At its low, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency was more than 50% below its October peak of $126,000. CoinMarketCap’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index, the platform’s own sentiment gauge, read “extreme fear.”

Crypto-linked stocks have had a rough month. Coinbase and stablecoin issuer Circle have both fallen sharply, and Circle had held up better than other crypto stocks during earlier declines. Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate buyer of bitcoin, traded below $90, a level it had not seen in two years, and the stock is down almost 80% over the past 12 months.

The bigger concern is Strategy’s Stretch preferred stock, which trades as STRC. It recently hit an all-time low of $72, more than 25% below its $100 par value. Strategy aims to keep Stretch trading near $100 by adjusting the dividend rate, which currently stands at 11.5%. The company has said it could raise that rate to attract buyers and push the price back toward par, and that it has the cash reserves to fund the payouts.

Assuming the 11.5% rate applies to the $100 par value, each share pays $11.50 a year. A buyer at $72 would therefore receive a yield of about 16% on the purchase price ($11.50 divided by $72). Nic Carter, a founding partner of crypto venture firm Castle Island Ventures, asked on social media what return a junk-bond investor, someone who takes on lower-rated debt in exchange for higher yields, would demand to own Stretch, which he called the riskiest part of Strategy’s capital structure. He estimated 15% to 20%. That is well above the stated dividend rate, but the market price has already pushed the effective yield into the low end of his range.

The payout is not guaranteed. Strategy’s risk disclosures say the company is not obligated to pay any yield and that it may fail to achieve, or may abandon, its intention of adjusting the dividend to keep STRC near par. Strategy did not respond to requests for comment.

Sean Farrell, head of digital asset strategy at Fundstrat, said he is hesitant to aggressively buy the dip. Bitcoin’s slide was not initially matched by other cryptocurrencies, which in his view suggests a problem specific to bitcoin rather than a temporary risk-off episode across crypto that might have offered a buying opportunity. He also said bitcoin’s decline is putting pressure on Strategy’s products broadly.

Don’t Expect Lower Interest Rates This Year, Economists Say

Treasury yields edged lower this week. The 10-year yield, which influences rates on consumer loans including mortgages, slipped Friday after falling Thursday, when the May reading of the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, came in line with expectations. Lower yields helped the rate-sensitive defensive sectors.

Economists do not expect meaningful relief for borrowers. Fannie Mae’s June housing forecast projects the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate will stay at 6.4% for the rest of the year. That is close to the range rates have held since May and slightly below the 6.49% average lenders offered this week, according to Freddie Mac.

Mortgage rates had been falling for about a year and a half, from around 7% at the start of 2025 to about 6% in March. The war in Iran then pushed up gasoline prices and revived investors’ inflation fears, which lifted 10-year Treasury yields and, with them, mortgage rates. The war has since wound down, but the inflation concerns remain. The U.S. inflation rate by year gives the longer history behind those worries.

The Fed added to them last week. Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair, used his first meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee to signal his determination to bring inflation back to the central bank’s 2% target. Markets took that to mean Warsh is likely to raise the federal funds rate at some point this year, which would push up borrowing costs on many kinds of loans. Earlier hopes that a new chair would cut rates soon faded quickly.

Jeff DerGurahian, chief investment officer and head economist at LoanDepot, noted that Warsh acknowledged the housing market’s difficulty with high mortgage rates but offered little to suggest near-term relief for buyers. In his view, 30-year fixed rates have barely moved, and a meaningful decline is still a long way off.

High mortgage rates have made homes less affordable in recent years, putting monthly payments out of reach for many buyers and contributing to a record number of young adults living with their parents. Anyone delaying a major purchase in the hope of lower rates may be waiting into 2027, and some forecasters see a real chance that some consumer loan rates rise before then.

Oil Falls, Gold Climbs, the Dollar Slips

Oil prices retreated Friday after rising Thursday on renewed tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for crude from the Persian Gulf. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, fell 3% to $70 a barrel, and Brent crude, the global benchmark, slipped to $73.50. Oil matters for the rate outlook as well as for energy stocks: gasoline prices driven by the Iran war were a major reason inflation fears returned this spring.

Gold futures rose nearly 1% to $4,080 a troy ounce, in line with the week’s move toward defensive assets. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the dollar against a basket of major foreign currencies, was down 0.1% at 101.30.

Company Movers

Several companies moved on their own news, separate from the AI-driven swings.

DraftKings Launches a Prediction Markets Exchange

DraftKings (DKNG) rose about 6% after launching DKeX, its own prediction markets exchange, as it tries to compete with Kalshi and Polymarket. The exchange is built on technology and a trading license DraftKings acquired when it bought Railbird Technologies last October. The company entered prediction markets in December by launching DraftKings Predictions on CME Group’s exchange.

CEO Jason Roberts said owning the exchange gives DraftKings Predictions a vertically integrated foundation, more control over the underlying technology, and the ability to move faster as it builds out its unified app. In practice, DraftKings is moving from offering event contracts on another company’s exchange to running its own.

The company said its prediction markets business recorded about $11 billion in annualized trading volume last week. It expects further growth next month as new event contracts launch and interest builds ahead of the World Cup final on July 19.

The competition is much larger. Kalshi’s annualized trading volume reached $178 billion in April, and it raised funding at a $22 billion valuation, nearly double DraftKings’ market value. Polymarket’s annualized revenue reportedly exceeds $1 billion, and volume on its newly launched U.S. platform reportedly quadrupled between mid-May and mid-June. Even after Friday’s gain, DraftKings shares are down nearly 30% this year.

NASA Contracts Lift Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab (RKLB) gained more than 5% after NASA selected it to launch three rockets for two separate research missions. The first launch is planned for early 2027 in New Zealand. Two back-to-back launches for the second mission are scheduled for no earlier than June 2027.

The company said NASA chose it because of its record of more than 90 launches, the deployment accuracy of its Electron rocket, and its ability to meet tight turnaround schedules for both missions. Rocket Lab shares are up more than 20% this year but remain well below their late-May highs, when space stocks surged ahead of SpaceX’s IPO. Rocket Lab was also one of the five companies added to the Nasdaq 100 this week.

Onsemi Slumps on Its Synaptics Deal

On Semiconductor (ON) fell 14% before the opening bell after announcing an all-stock acquisition of fellow chipmaker Synaptics (SYNA). Synaptics shareholders will receive 1.35 Onsemi shares for each Synaptics share, a deal that values Synaptics at about $7 billion. Synaptics shares rose 5% premarket.

In an all-stock deal, the target’s shareholders are paid in the buyer’s shares, so the dollar value of the offer moves with the buyer’s stock price. Onsemi’s premarket drop therefore reduced the value of what Synaptics holders will receive, unless the terms change. The deal is expected to close by mid-2027.

Onsemi said the acquisition adds chips for physical AI uses such as robotics and self-driving cars to its existing data center chips. It said the combination could expand its total addressable market by $30 billion, to $243 billion by 2030. Investors reacted to the price and dilution, not to that long-term market estimate.

How This Week Fits the Summer Tape

This week’s mix of falling tech, rising defensives and a resilient Dow was not new. Earlier in June, technology was leading the market higher, as the June 8 session showed when the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose on tech strength. The same divergence returned after the end of June, with the Dow setting a record while tech sold off in the July 2 session, and concerns about AI spending weighing on the Nasdaq again in mid-July.

The pattern suggests that the debate over AI valuations, the IPO pipeline and the cost of AI infrastructure was not settled by one bad week. Whether the market had “peaked” for 2026 depended on which index an investor watched. A portfolio concentrated in megacaps and chip stocks felt this week very differently from one weighted toward healthcare, utilities and the Dow’s industrial members.