The Final Tally: NVDA Sits Out While Qualcomm and AMD Throw a Chip Party… Apple’s WWDC Flops

Mr. Market kicked off the week with all the excitement of last night’s NBA Finals beatdown… aka, not much. Stocks inched higher Monday… thanks to yet another round of “will they/won’t they” trade talks between the U.S. and China. This time, the reality tv show moved to London, where Trump’s team met with China’s squad for handshakes, awkward smiles, meme worthy moments, and hopefully (for all of our sakes) fewer tariffs. The S&P 500 poked above 6,000 for the first time since February (barely) but hey, progress. Nasdaq climbed 0.4%, the Dow tiptoed up 0.2%, and everyone pretended to be happy, happy, happy (as Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty used to say).

Semiconductor stocks led the way after Qualcomm announced it’s blowing $2.4 billion on Alphawave, a chipmaker nobody had heard of until today. AMD and Texas Instruments followed suit, each adding over 4% as traders piled into anything remotely tied to chips. Nvidia, surprisingly, barely moved. Apple, meanwhile, hosted its WWDC event and rolled out a big redesign called “Liquid Glass,” which sounds like a hydration product but is actually iOS with a facelift (aimed to make the interface feel more fluid across devices). Wall Street, unimpressed by the lack of AI pizzazz, punished the stock with a 1.5% drop (Tim Cook, blink twice if you need OpenAI’s help).

Tesla stayed flat ahead of its robotaxi pilot test in Austin on June 12. The calm came after last week’s 15% plunge, where Elon Musk trashed over $150 billion in market cap after throwing a fit over Trump’s spending bill on X. In response, Trump later told NBC he has “no intention” of speaking with Elon right now (as if Elon, the richest man on the globe, was curled up in bed worrying about it).

Bitcoin had itself a day, jumping more than 2% to trade just above $108,000. Why? One, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF just recorded its largest single-day inflow in over a month. Two, Trump doubled down on his pro-crypto stance during a recent rally, pledging to “protect your Bitcoin” and even entertain paying federal salaries in crypto. Whether he means it or not is another matter, but the market ate it up. This year, Bitcoin is now up over 16%.

As Bitcoin surged, so did MicroStrategy, which rose over 4%. The company, which owns Bitcoin and posts memes on Twitter to stay relevant, filed with the SEC to sell another $500 million in stock… to buy (you guessed it) more Bitcoin. Circle, fresh off its blockbuster IPO, jumped another 15% and now sports a $24 billion valuation. This comes after doubling in its first two days of trading. Wall Street seems to be betting that Circle will become the go-to infrastructure behind digital payments.

And then there’s Robinhood… still dressed in its suit and tie with nowhere to go, waiting by the index door like the kid who brought cupcakes to a birthday party he wasn’t invited to. After months of Reddit hype and analysts practically begging for it to be included in the S&P 500, the official rebalance came and went… and HOOD got ghosted. Shares slipped 3% as reality set in that being trendy doesn’t mean you're a benchmark mainstay. Just last week, Bank of America had them on the shortlist. Maybe Vlad should’ve spent less time launching gold cards and more time impressing the index committee with, you know, actual fundamentals.

Up next: inflation data. The May Consumer Price Index (CPI) drops Wednesday, with Producer Price Index (PPI) following on Thursday. If either of those reports comes in steaming, expect Powell’s call to land like a turd in a punch bowl.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.