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Market Report for Wednesday, June 25, 2025

AI stocks soared, the Fed hedged, and the market took a well-earned breather after laughing off last weekend’s $100 oil prophecy. Nvidia hit a new high. Powell reminded Washington that tariffs raise prices. One of those surprised investors.

Level Change 6/25/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
-0.3 Dow
+0.3 Nasdaq
+0.2 Nasdaq 100
-0.0 S&P 500
-0.8 S&P 400
-1.0 S&P 600

The day belonged to tech, especially its AI high priests: Nvidia in the pulpit, Super Micro swinging incense.

Nvidia (NVDA +4.3%) notched another all-time high after Loop Capital raised its price target to $250, enough to make it a $6.1T company. In today’s currency, that’s one Blackwell chip for every 40 adults on Earth, which feels about right for managing them. Super Micro Computer (SMCI +8.8%) went even bigger, offering Wall Street its favorite pairing: server racks and exponential adjectives.

By Loop’s reckoning, Nvidia holds a monopoly on essential AI hardware, and the AI boom is—you guessed it—just getting started. Never mind last year’s “just getting started,” or the year before that. The line keeps landing because a new day keeps dawning on the server farms.

Spending on AI accelerators could climb at a pace so steep it needs pitons and a rope team, to $2T by 2028, making CPUs look like floppy disks and convincing governments to build data centers instead of bridges. GPU share of compute could swell from 15% to 50%, turning the central processing unit into the not-so-central one.

The rest of the market waited in the green room for a call that never came.

Small- and mid-cap stocks napped shoulder to shoulder, seeing little AI in their near future. Maybe some automated pink slips in HR. The equal-weight S&P lagged its cap-weighted cousin by 70 basis points, which is just another way of saying Nvidia now outweighs 229 other companies combined.

On the macro front, Fed Chair Jerome Powell wrapped day two of testimony by confirming what everyone’s been yelling since February: tariffs are inflationary.

“There isn’t a lot of modern learning here,” he deadpanned, as if describing someone else’s central bank. “The tariffs during President Trump’s first term were one-sixth of the size they are now.”

At least he hinted that future trade deals might open the door to rate cuts. That depends on data and—in this administration’s case—politics. A certain central figure likes his rates like he likes his taxes: low, preferably invisible.

And that was the day: megatech marched, Powell testified, and the rest of the market curled up with a blanket and waited for someone to tweet something.

— Jason Kelly

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Market Report for Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Plenty happened Tuesday, but markets knew the score. This wasn’t about Powell’s testimony or tariff rumblings in Brussels. It was about the Israel-Iran ceasefire holding, oil prices plunging, and investors getting back to their favorite pastime: buying things…

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Market Report for Monday, June 23, 2025

Wall Street took a good look at the weekend’s missile exchange and decided it wasn’t the end of the world—or even the end of the rally. Iran’s underwhelming counterpunch calmed oil, the Fed whispered sweet rate-cut nothings, and stocks applauded.

Level Change 6/23/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
+0.9 Dow
+0.9 Nasdaq
+1.1 Nasdaq 100
+1.0 S&P 500
+0.8 S&P 400
+1.2 S&P 600

The Middle East took top billing again, but failed to deliver the feared encore.

After the US redecorated three of Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend, converting enrichment centers into ventilation experiments, Tehran answered with something closer to a curtsy than a counterstrike. Its missile barrage, aimed at a conveniently vacant US airbase in Qatar and telegraphed hours in advance, landed with all the menace of a scheduled fire drill.

Crude oil tumbled 7.2%, back under $70, as traders priced in what Iran seemed to script: de-escalation. The Strait of Hormuz, that perennial geopolitical boogeyman, stayed open as ever. Iran talks a good blockade, but never quite remembers to bring the padlock. No word yet from all those analysts who confidently warned of $100 oil over the weekend. New price target: “never mind.”

With geopolitics back in its box, Wall Street refocused on its enduring obsession: the next Fed move.

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said she’d back a July cut if inflation behaves. Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee echoed the view, noting that the much-hyped tariff shock hasn’t actually shocked. If inflation doesn’t show up soon, he said, “we never left the golden path.” Goldilocks, meet the dot plot.

In Silicon Valley, Apple (AAPL +0.3%) is circling Perplexity AI, in search of a bespoke end to its Google dependency and, finally, some actual intelligence behind Apple Intelligence. The plan: fold Perplexity’s AI search into Safari, replacing Google as the default and putting a dent in the monopoly. Shares of Google slipped 1% on the idea—Perplexed, you might say.

Tesla (TSLA +8.2%) logged the day’s biggest megatech gain on the back of its long-promised robotaxi debut. The actual event—a few chaperoned joyrides in an Austin neighborhood—fell short of the Cybercab revolution Musk once trumpeted. No steering wheels surrendered, no industries disrupted. But investors treated it like the moon landing. One small step for Teslakind, one giant leap for speculative pricing.

And that was the day: missiles that missed, oil that slipped, and a market that marched on.

— Jason Kelly

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Market Report for Friday, June 20, 2025

Fed Governor Waller said it might be time to cut rates. The market responded with the enthusiasm of a teenager asked to clean the garage: noted, but unmoved…

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Market Report for Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Stocks perfected their dead-fish routine Wednesday, flopping aimlessly before settling into a glassy-eyed stare. Without a dominant headline—just wars, rates, and megatech melodrama—Wall Street did what it does best: very little.

Level Change 6/18/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
-0.1 Dow
+0.1 Nasdaq
+0.0 Nasdaq 100
-0.0 S&P 500
+0.3 S&P 400
+0.4 S&P 600

The main show remains the Middle East, where Israel’s preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear infrastructure set off alarms, but not oil shocks. WTI rose a sleepy 0.3%, more shrug than spike. Energy-conscious China condemned Israel’s action, not out of principle, of course, but because it might mess with the fuel bill. Translation: let’s all cool it; Beijing has barrels to fill.

Bigger picture: Removing the Iranian regime and its terror tentacles could work wonders on regional stability.

Ask any Iranian citizen and you’re sure to hear eagerness for change, to say nothing of Israeli citizens. This latest flare-up might look like a crisis, but could be the kind that clears the air. A little short-term pain for a lot of long-term gain. And let’s not forget: Iran accounts for just 3% of global oil production. Not exactly irreplaceable—and not exactly at risk of needing replacement.

As for President Trump’s follow-up to Tuesday’s saber-rattling, it offered no new intel. Markets remained glued to the wait-and-see channel.

Trade news sounded off like a dull cymbal. The G7 delivered no deal momentum, and the White House has returned to framing tariffs as a budget-friendly revenue strategy. The IRS may want a word. For now, the tariff-as-tax experiment continues.

At the Fed, policy stayed on hold, with dot plots dotting all the right notes for a stand-pat summer and two rate cuts this fall.

Chair Powell acknowledged tariff fog and brushed aside inflation fears, even as 2026 and 2027 rate projections drifted hawkish. But when no one knows what happens in the next two days, forecasts for the next two years feel like stand-up comedy. Gone from the statement: concerns about unemployment. Added: vibes-based uncertainty, now apparently lower, though still elevated. Most reassuring.

In megatech intrigue, Meta’s (META -0.2%) Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly dangling $100M signing bonuses at OpenAI employees like golden fishing lures. OpenAI boss Sam Altman, exuding the calm of a man holding the AGI ace, said no one’s bitten. He also lobbed a grenade at Meta’s track record, saying on the Uncapped podcast: “I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” the verbal equivalent of tweaking Zuck’s nose and walking away.

On the other coast, Marvell (MRVL +7.1%) radiated AI ambition at its Custom AI Investor Day. No longer just a chip shop, it now wants to be the Intel Inside of AI infrastructure. With custom computing and interconnect revenue up 30% and 37% respectively, the future looks like cloud factories churning out superintelligence one XPU at a time.

The company bumped its 2028 data center total addressable market (TAM) forecast to $94B from last year’s $75B. It’s betting big that general-purpose GPUs are the MySpace of machine learning. If your bumper’s big enough, here’s your new sticker: Highly Customized System-Level Collaboration.

And that was the day: Mideast tension, Fed indecision, tariff revisionism, and $100M job offers for people whose names don’t even autocomplete.

— Jason Kelly

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