【U.S. Stock Market】Meta surges 10%, pivots into cloud computing market and sells excess computing power; chip stocks slump, Dow rises 85 points (continuously updated)

Federal Reserve Chair Walsh delivered a speech at the European Central Bank forum. During the talk, he said the Federal Reserve will open a new policy path to determine better policies, while emphasizing that no forward guidance will be provided. He also expects that at the July Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, there will be intense internal policy disagreements.

The U.S. June ADP employment report, popularly known as “the small non-farm,” showed an increase of 98,000 jobs, below expectations of 118,000. The May figure was kept at 122,000.

Data from the human resources firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that the number of layoffs announced by U.S. companies in June fell 53% month-over-month to 45,849, and fell 4% year-over-year.

Market sources said that the U.S. and Iran are holding indirect technical talks in Doha, Qatar, with Qatar and Pakistan acting as mediators. The two sides will not meet directly. International oil prices continued to fall: New York crude fell 0.9% to $68.88 per barrel, while Brent crude fell 0.9% to $72.28 per barrel; gold prices remained weak. New York gold futures fell 0.9% to $4,002 per ounce, spot gold fell 0.5% to $3,989 per ounce, slipping below the $4,000 level. In total, it fell 4%.

The three major U.S. stock indexes opened mixed. The Dow rose 85 points to 52,404. The S&P fell 3 points to 7,495. The Nasdaq fell 99 points, or 0.4%, to 26,114.

In focus, Meta, the parent company of the social platform Facebook (U.S.: META), surged nearly 10% at the open. The company suddenly pivoted its AI deployment, deciding to enter the cloud computing infrastructure market and sell artificial intelligence (AI) computing power and model access rights—dragging chip stocks sharply lower. Micron (U.S.: MU) fell by more than 8%, and Sandisk (U.S.: SNDK) dropped by more than 10%.

In an interview, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said that the current imbalance between supply and demand for chip products is not caused solely by memory chip manufacturers. He believed that in recent years some customers have pushed hard to lower prices during negotiations, resulting in insufficient capacity investment for the industry. This meant the entire industry did not plan ahead and failed to keep up with the demand surge brought by the AI industry.

He admitted that in 2023, some customers significantly cut industry prices to one-third of the previous level. The price collapse pushed storage suppliers into negative gross margins, leaving the entire industry with insufficient financial flexibility to invest in new capacity.

In-session market movement:

【23:00】Meta surges 10%, pivots to the cloud computing market and sells excess computing power; chip stocks plunge; Dow rises 85 points

【21:30】Fed Chair Walsh: Expects intense internal divisions at the July policy meeting; U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury yields rise; Dow falls 166 points and chip stocks plunge

【18:00】U.S. and Iran are holding indirect technical talks; oil and gold prices both slide; Dow futures down 124 points

【17:00】 【AI+ Anthropic】U.S. Department of Commerce lifts export controls; Anthropic restores access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models starting tomorrow

【16:40】 【AAPL】U.S. Supreme Court accepts Apple’s appeal; reviews the “contempt of court” ruling in Epic Games antitrust case

【16:30】 【Trump】Last year made more than 9.3 billion yuan from crypto; personal net worth soars to 59.2 billion

【16:20】 【TSLA】Tesla tests its first Cybercab; Tesla says the U.S. has suggested exempting installation of brake pedals

【16:00】 【Layoffs】Microsoft rumored to resume large-scale layoffs involving thousands of positions; Xbox division hardest hit

See how U.S. stocks closed:

AI stocks performed well. SanDisk (U.S.: SNDK) rose 10.9%, AMD (U.S.: AMD) rose 7.7%, Marvell Technology (U.S.: MRVL) rose 7.3%, TSMC (U.S.: TSM) rose 4.9%, Nebius (U.S.: NBIS) rose 5.8%, CoreWeave (U.S.: CRWV) rose 4.2%. However, Micron (U.S.: MU) rose only 0.8%.

Musk’s “twin” companies rose. Tesla (U.S.: TSLA; Tesla) rose 2.1%, and SpaceX (U.S.: SPCX) rose 4.1%, closing at $170.86.

U.S. bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rose to 4.465% due to still-strong U.S. data—especially that JOLTS job openings were 7.594 million, exceeding the 7.296 million expected. At the same time, with inflation expectations, pressure to raise interest rates increased.

The U.S. and Iran are talking through intermediaries in Doha. The market is watching developments. Oil prices were soft: New York crude fell 1% to $70.07, and Brent crude fell 0.3% to $72.92. Spot gold prices moved little at $4,008.38.

A spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that U.S. Middle East envoy Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Kushner will arrive in Qatar to meet with mediators to discuss the negotiations, but there are currently no plans to arrange high-level talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Overall for the first half of the year, the Dow rose 8.9%, the S&P rose 9.6%, and the Nasdaq rose 12.8%, continuing the upward trend for the past three consecutive years.

Bitcoin was under pressure, falling below $60,000 and temporarily at $58,482, down 3% for the day. Coinbase (U.S.: COIN) fell 3.6%, Strategy (U.S.: MSTR) fell 6.2%, and Circle fell 17.7%.

Metropolitan Investment Management said that artificial intelligence (AI) remains the core engine driving market growth. As agentic AI gradually moves from the infrastructure stage to practical business applications, corporate capital expenditure continues to receive support. At the same time, the market is also placing more emphasis on distinguishing companies that truly benefit from the long-term AI development trend from individual stocks mainly driven by market sentiment.

Hong Kong stocks and ADR market conditions are continuously updated. For details, please see: Next page

In-session market movement:

【14:59】Dow futures rose 15 points to 52,587; S&P 500 futures rose 6 points to 7,506; Nasdaq futures rose 71 points, or 0.2%, to 30,124.

【14:59】Oil prices fell 1%. New York crude fell 1.1% to $70, Brent crude fell 1.4% to $72.14. Gold prices held steady: New York gold futures rose 0.1% to $4,043, and spot gold rose 0.3% to $4,028.

【14:07】 【Fed Personnel】Overturning a 91-year precedent, U.S. Supreme Court expands the president’s power to remove senior officials; limited protection for Federal Reserve independence; Cook temporarily stays on

【12:39】 【U.S. Stock Analysis】Dow closes above 52,000 points for the first time. Analysis: Do not sell tech stocks at current levels to buy traditional stocks; AI-related shares are expected to remain in demand

【12:33】 【Oil Price Trend】Morgan Stanley cuts its oil price forecast again, the second time in two weeks; Brent crude is seen at $80 in Q4

【11:07】 【AAPL】Apple’s India plant Tata hit by a hacker attack; iPhone 18 real-device photos, chip data, and supplier lists leaked to the dark web

【09:43】 【Yen Trend】The yen breaks below 162, falling below 4.82 against the Hong Kong dollar; hits a new 40-year low. Analysis: Even if intervention occurs, the effect would be temporary

【01:32】 【META】WhatsApp launches username feature; 3 billion users can avoid publicly displaying phone numbers

【00:57】 【GOOGL】Google Cloud launches research AI models, targeting pharmaceutical and chip materials R&D

【00:19】 【AAPL】Apple strikes back against India’s antitrust investigation, criticizing a regulator report as too crude

==== The following is U.S. stock market coverage for June 29 ====

Monday: Nasdaq jumps more than 2%, Dow up 306 points, yen at a 40-year low. Highlight: ensuring Fed Governor Cook will not make key decisions

With the situation in the Middle East easing, investors bought U.S. tech stocks, lifting U.S. stocks higher on Monday. The Nasdaq jumped more than 2%, and the Dow at one point rose 435 points. The market focused on Fed Chair Walsh’s speech at the ECB annual meeting this week, looking for clues on the future direction of interest rates. The yen against the dollar hit a 40-year low.

See how U.S. stocks closed:

The Dow closed at 52,182 points, up 306 points. The S&P rose 1.18%, and the Nasdaq rose 2.07%.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Trump currently has no power to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, stating that monetary policy should not be subject to political interference. Trump responded on social media, saying he will take appropriate action in the Cook lawsuit, ensuring that she will not make critical decisions on Federal Reserve monetary policy issues.

In a statement, Cook said the court’s ruling reaffirmed a long-standing principle that supports sound economic management: the Fed must make all policy decisions entirely based on evidence and independent judgment, free from political interference.

SpaceX will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index next month; its stock rose 7.1%. AI software stocks performed strongly: Alphabet was officially added to the Dow; its stock rose 4.8%. Tesla (Tesla) rose 8.5%.

A group of U.S. companies filed a class antitrust lawsuit, accusing Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. The allegations include details such as a 700% increase over 4 years, and cutting production of traditional DRAM under the guise of HBM. The lawsuit was filed on June 25, last Thursday—perfectly matching the timing of the sharp drop in memory stocks. Micron fell again by 9.6% before turning to rise 1.1% at the close. SanDisk (U.S.: SNDK) had fallen 9.4%, with the decline narrowing to 1.9% at close.

The plaintiffs allege that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron used their absolute dominant positions of over 90% in the global DRAM market. They claim, on the surface, that capacity is being shifted to higher-margin high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to respond to the AI boom, but in reality they are artificially creating shortages. Using HBM as a “smokescreen,” they cooperated to cut production of traditional DDR3 and DDR4 chips, deliberately creating severe shortages in the retail market. This caused the price of ordinary DRAM to surge by about 700% over the past four years. The plaintiffs’ economic reasoning points out that in a healthy competitive market, a price surge should attract manufacturers to “expand production” to gain market share—but the three giants did the opposite by “jointly contracting supply,” demonstrating a clear collusive monopoly understanding.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for President Trump to freely remove officials at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and most (though not all) of the long politically independent agencies. For agencies that had long enjoyed political protection, this is a historic dismantling. The ruling will greatly expand the president’s power and influence. The ruling overturned the nearly century-old precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, which stated that commissioners of independent agencies may not be removed without specific cause.

Trump celebrated the ruling on Truth Social, calling it a “major victory,” confirming his power to replace officials: “As the sitting president who won this historic and unprecedented ruling, I feel extremely honored. This is one of the most important rulings on presidential power.”

However, the 6-to-3 ruling exempted the Federal Reserve, consistent with earlier signals from the Supreme Court that it views the central bank differently. Chief Justice John Roberts said the central bank has a “unique historical tradition.”

Trump said he will stop striking Iran, and resumed talks in Doha on Tuesday. New York crude oil rose 2.2% to close at $70.75, and Brent crude rose 1.61% to close at $73.15.

Richmond Fed President Barkin warned that inflation is still too high, but there are signs that price pressure may ease soon. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Thursday’s employment report may show “another strong number.” He said the productivity boom brought by AI has a deflationary effect, so the case for raising interest rates right now is not that strong.

The U.S. dollar index softened, down 0.2% to 101.13, but the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 4.381%.

The yen fell 0.14% to 161.98 per dollar, breaking below the low in July 2024 and hitting a new low since 1986. Investors are watching whether Japanese authorities will step in again to support the yen.

Hong Kong stocks and ADR market conditions are continuously updated. For details, please see: Next page

In-session market movement:

【21:30】Dow opened up 164 points at 52,040. The Nasdaq rose 1.1% to 25,578. The S&P opened up 52 points at 7,406.

【19:17】Dow futures rose 168 points; Nasdaq futures rose 1%; S&P futures rose 45 points.

【15:18】Dow futures rose 95 points to 52,304; S&P futures rose 37 points to 7,439; Nasdaq futures rose 219 points or 0.7% to 29,587.

【15:18】New York crude oil rose 1% to $69.92, and Brent crude rose 0.5% to $72.32. New York gold futures fell 0.5% to $4,074, while spot gold fell 0.7% to $4,058.

【15:01】 【AI+ Computing Power】Computing power can’t keep up with demand; Google reportedly “turns off the tap” for Meta, limiting Gemini usage caps

【12:44】 【Memory】Samsung and SK Hynix reportedly plan to invest 10 trillion won to expand AI semiconductors, partnering with the Korean government to release “Three Major Projects” at 2 PM on Monday; Morningstar breaks down hidden risks in the expansion plans

【11:40】 【Breaking Tradition】U.S. marks its 250th anniversary by rolling out a limited “Patriot Passport”; Trump becomes the first sitting president to appear on a passport

【10:46】 【AI+Anthropic】Austria proposes that the EU attract Anthropic to set up a base, hoping to break through U.S. export restrictions

【10:42】 【AAPL】Apple reportedly seeks approval to purchase chips from CXMT to avoid being put on an entity list. Kuo Ming-chi: The truth is the 2027 memory supply and demand gap crisis. Citi: Enhances CXMT’s global position

【06:46】 【Iran Crisis】Oil prices rise. Axios: U.S. and Iran stop attacking each other; talks on the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday

【06:00】ChatGPT developer OpenAI reportedly delays its IPO to next year, weighing on AI hardware stocks. U.S. stocks were choppy and slightly weak last Friday: the Dow fell by as much as 305 points, and the Nasdaq recorded five consecutive down days. The Dow closed at 51,876 points, down 44 points; the S&P fell slightly by 0.05%; and the Nasdaq fell by 0.24%.

See how U.S. stocks closed:

For details on last week’s U.S. stock market developments, see: 【U.S. Stock Closing】OpenAI reportedly delays IPO to next year; Nasdaq falls another 0.2%; Kashkari expects one rate hike this year; Dow gives back 44 points