Hard landing. Things were looking up for chip stocks on Monday. Then Tuesday came around, and that rally fizzled out.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.2% today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%, and the S&P 500 dropped 0.5%.
Even though all three major indexes closed in the red, it wasn't as bad as it seems. Six of the S&P's 11 sectors closed higher, led by a 3% gain in energy stocks. A little over half of S&P stocks -- 56% -- rose on the day.
When it comes down to it, chip stocks were the problem -- again. The iShares Semiconductor ETF fell 5.1% today, after Samsung Electronics' earnings sparked a selloff. The report itself was good. Great, even. Yet shares still dropped about 7% on Tuesday.
"Results were 'only' 6% ahead of estimates and it seems to have brought in a bout of profit-taking," wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid in a research note on Tuesday.
Fears that the AI bubble could burst anytime have also prompted investors to diversify into other sectors. In the past month, financials, industrials, and healthcare have all outperformed chip stocks.
Semiconductors weren't the only thing weighing on the Nasdaq today -- SpaceX was having a rough day , too. The stock closed 6.8% lower on Tuesday, its first trading day as part of the Nasdaq 100, marking one of the fastest inclusions to a major index ever. As if to commemorate the day, banks released many new ratings on the stock. So far, 15 new ratings are in; of those, 14 are a Buy, and one is a Hold. Banks involved in an IPO typically wait a few weeks to publish their research.
Also worth flagging: bond yields spiked late in the day after the U.S. government said it was revoking sanction waivers for Iranian oil in response to the country's attacks on commercial ships. Oil prices rose, too, with Brent crude futures climbing more than 5% to $75.65 a barrel.
Never a dull moment, right?
The Hot Stock: Cognizant Technology +6.2% The Biggest Loser: Intel -9.7%
Best Sector: Energy +3% Worst Sector: Industrials -1.7%
Trading Cards Are the New Casino
Sports betting and prediction markets are so yesterday. The newest gambling trend is more retro: Topps trading cards.
You remember Topps, right? Back in the day, baseball cards came with a stick of gum. That gum is long gone, replaced by one-of-a-kind cards randomly inserted in packs. That's helping make card trading (whether it be baseball or Pokémon) more akin to buying a lottery ticket than playing a game, writes my colleague Nick Devor .
Since 2020, Pokémon card prices have surged 1,634%, according to an index run by Card Ladder, a subsidiary of collectors. And last Christmas, Morgan Stanley valued the collectibles market at $100 billion.
Companies like eBay, Target, Walmart, Hasbro, and Fanatics stand to benefit from the boom. But this renewed card-trading fervor comes with a dark side as young consumers buy into the hype. A study published earlier this year in the Psychology of Addictive Behaviors research journal found that "spending money on physical card packs containing random cards of varying value offered by collectible and trading card games is linked to problem gambling."
Alyx Effron, a 36-year-old from New Jersey, told Nick his blackjack and sports betting habit feels no different than his compulsion to buy sports cards, which led him to spend thousands of dollars a week on unopened packs.
For more on how this new gambling trend is shaking out, read Nick's full piece here.
The Calendar
Levi Strauss reports second-quarter fiscal-2026 results tomorrow.
The Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its mid-June monetary-policy meeting. At that meeting, the FOMC kept the federal-funds rate unchanged at 3.5% to 3.75%.
It was the first FOMC meeting chaired by Kevin Warsh, who succeeded Jerome Powell in late May. Warsh reiterated the Federal Reserve's target of 2% inflation which Wall Street perceived as hawkish. Traders are pricing in a quarter-point rate hike by the end of October, compared with a hike by next January before the meeting.
-- Dan Lam
What We're Reading Today
-- Former Pfizer Building Is Crumbling -- Just as the Stock Has
-- QQQ, Meet IQQ. BlackRock Is Launching a Cheaper Nasdaq-100 ETF.
-- Walmart Cuts Food Prices, but Shoppers Are Fed Up
-- 2 Healthcare Stocks to Buy for Their Dividends -- and Why Pfizer Isn't
One of Them
-- BofA Warns on Big Tech: Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon's AI Spending Could
Spook the Market
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 07, 2026 19:55 ET (23:55 GMT)
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