It was a volatile day on Wall Street after a short-lived tech rally soured and abruptly reversed course.
Micron's stellar earnings report boosted the stock by nearly 20% and reignited the AI trade, helping the Nasdaq 100 jump 2% at Thursday's opening bell.
But it wasn't to last. Just a half an hour into regular trading, the tech-heavy Nasdaq's gains reversed, dragged lower by Apple stock, which dropped on news of price hikes on devices as it responds to the memory-supply crunch.
Apple officially raised price for Macs and iPads, a change outgoing CEO Tim Cook warned about earlier this month when discussing memory chip costs.
Here's where major indexes stood at the 4:00 p.m. ET closing bell:
- S&P 500: 7,357.50, down 0.01%
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: 51,920.62, up 0.14% (+71.72 points)
- Nasdaq 100: 29,440.32, up 0.75%
The premarket rally was led by the some of the stocks that saw the most dramatic declines earlier in the week, including Micron and other memory chipmakers.
Apple and other Magnificent Seven names were among the tech stocks in the red in Thursday's session.
Here were some of Thursday's most notable moves:
- Sandisk: +19.5%
- Micron: +16.3%
- Western Digital: +4.8%
- Dell: -6%
- Palantir: -5.4%
- Apple: -6.1%
- Microsoft: -3.5%
- Nvidia: -1.6%
Micron's earnings may have been "too good," Futurum CEO Daniel Newman told Business Insider.
$AAPL raising prices spooked the market turning today's rally briefly negative. $MU print was "too good" but while datacenter builds go on, the cost of memory being passed to consumers just became very real.
— Daniel Newman (@danielnewmanUV) June 25, 2026
"The pricing pressure is very real and it's landing in the laps of consumers with the likes of Apple raising prices due to memory," he said, adding, "Structurally the capex and AI trade got validation, but the knock on effects are being digested. This plus profit concentration are certainly contributors to volatility."
Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield told Business Insider that Micron's strong results can't offset a tough technical setup.
"My sense is that even with strong A.I. fundamentals (e.g., Micron), positioning is still really lopsided so good news gets sold intraday. The rotation out of AI infrastructure and memory was never really about fundamentals – it was a technical move – so while Micron’s results reinforce the durability of the AI buildout, it doesn’t do much to relieve the immediate pressure of overcrowded positioning in the tech space," he outlined.
Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, explained Thursday's moves reflects investors realizing that the memory chip price surge is raising costs for consumer tech.
Ya so apple kills the micron fun on earnings day rally so that people understand that when memory prices soar… Same with the cost to build phones and computers… it’s a buzz kill for sure but AI is a whole new monster to tame…. $MU $AAPL
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) June 25, 2026
Ted Mortonson, a tech strategist at Baird, told BI that the market moves reflect worries about inflation within the tech sector as well as a broader rotation into other sectors from tech. "Pricing increases not sustainable," he said.
