Stock Rally Collides With a New Slate of Worries
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite fell in every session this week
- The S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite fell for five consecutive days, losing about 2% and 4.6%, respectively.
- Declines were driven by worries about artificial-intelligence companies’ future profits and the prospect of higher borrowing costs.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% this week, and the S&P 500’s healthcare sector rose 7.9% to a record.
Worries about AI and private credit. Continuing supply-chain disruptions from the war. Higher interest rates. The stock-market rally has run headlong into a series of challenges—some new, and some familiar.
Stocks limped to the end of a five-day slump on Friday, a run in which even blowout earnings from chip maker Micron couldn’t build any traction in major indexes. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite fell in every day of a calendar week for the first time since April 2024, losing about 2% and 4.6%, respectively.
The declines left even bullish investors seeing pressures that threaten the record run. Those include skepticism that artificial-intelligence companies will deliver profits that justify the billions of dollars being spent. They also include the prospect that borrowing costs will stay higher than many assumed.
“I just don’t think it’s a time as an investor that you should be focused on swinging for the fences,” said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors.
Investors have been on edge since Kevin Warsh on June 17 signaled a greater concern about inflation than many expected in his debut meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Traders increased bets that rates will rise this year instead of fall. Stocks slid.
The declines continued this past week, which began with a tech selloff that ripped through chip makers from Seoul to Santa Clara, Calif. Micron’s upbeat outlook after Wednesday’s close looked set to spark a rebound, but momentum faded quickly, especially after Apple and Microsoft announced they would increase prices for MacBooks and Xbox gaming consoles, respectively.
The price hikes highlighted the pressures confronting end users of memory chips. Apple shares fell more than 6% on Thursday in the stock’s worst day in more than a year. Microsoft touched a 52-week low before rebounding on Friday.
Yet shares of chip makers slid too, with the PHLX Semiconductor Index falling 7.9%, logging its worst week in more than a year. Broadcom fell 11%, Advanced Micro Devices declined 2.9% and South Korea’s SK Hynix shed 3.3%. Nvidia shares slumped 8.6%, notching their worst week since April 2025 and costing the index heavyweight $439 billion in market value. Palantir Technologies slid 12%.
Even SpaceX struggled, with shares of Elon Musk’s rocket company giving up their stratospheric gains, on Friday briefly dipping below their initial opening-day price of $150 before closing the session up 0.2% at $153.23 a share.
Stocks tied to the so-called real economy held up better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% this week and closed within 0.2% of all-time highs. The S&P 500’s healthcare sector rose 7.9% to close Friday at a record. Shares of Johnson & Johnson added more than 11%, notching their best week since October 2008 and lifting the company past $600 billion in market value for the first time.
Utility stocks, seen as both a defensive play and a beneficiary of the power required for the AI boom, rose 3.9% this week. Consumer staples, another haven, added 1.5%.
Those gains helped the S&P 500’s equal-weighted version, which gives each stock the same influence instead of weighting companies by market value, outperform the benchmark index by the widest weekly margin since 2020.
Still, analysts said rising rates could weigh on profits in a variety of investments from stocks to bonds and gold. Bank of America economists recently said they expect the Fed to raise rates three times this year by 25 basis points each and hold steady in 2027, citing in part a hawkish shift in the central bank’s communication that signaled a more proactive approach to fighting inflation.
The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge continued growing in May, up by 4.1% over the past year, its highest reading since April 2023 and more than double the central bank’s 2% target.
While oil prices have fallen toward prewar levels, some analysts say that a wave of artificial-intelligence demand and a robust labor market give reason to believe that price pressures could keep inflation elevated. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, declined 8.7% to $69.23 a barrel this week, while international Brent crude futures fell 11% to $71.99.
Some analysts say that the rally can go on despite higher rates.
Strategists at Barclays recently raised their year-end S&P 500 price target to 7800, arguing that strong earnings growth will keep the rally going despite the potential for higher borrowing costs and more stress on the AI boom.
Christian Chan, chief investment officer at AssetMark, said that while higher rates could weigh on corporate profits, he expects earnings growth to still be robust enough to continue fueling the stock rally. Companies in the S&P 500 are expected to see profits grow 24% in 2026, according to FactSet.
“It’s not a regime-changing event as it relates to earnings growth, which is kind of what the markets ultimately care about,” said Chan.