Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Markets look to have grown fairly exhausted today, sliding from the green to red during the morning hours and closing flat-to-down (aside from the Nasdaq, where the tech trade remains healthy) and reaching the closing bell at lackluster levels. The Dow slipped 106 points, -0.25%, while the S&P 500 was exactly unched — 0.0% — on the day. The Nasdaq gained +61 points, +0.31%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 closed at session lows: -0.99%.
The morning-hours catalyst may have been Fed Chair Jerome Powell today, appearing before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the possibility of cutting interest rates. Yesterday, Powell energized markets somewhat when he told the House Financial Services that the Fed could cut rates “sooner than later,” but today he predicted inflation coming from tariff policy in the coming months. “Someone has to pay,” he told the panel.
Yet the Nasdaq is approaching fresh all-time highs not seen since February, as the AI-trade narrative has kept top tech stocks buoyant. Take NVIDIA NVDA, for instance, which is up nearly +64% just since its early April lows during trade war fears before reciprocal tariffs were paused for 90 days. Shares are now at record highs as AI investment reported by companies in various industries are engaged in the technological buildout for which NVIDIA leads in component-building.
Micron Beats & Raises for Q3
Fiscal Q3 earnings were released after today’s close from data storage giant Micron MU. This company is a good example of how AI investment bolsters companies in this realm of the tech space, as well. Earnings of $1.68 per share outpaced the Zacks consensus by 9 cents, up a whopping +171% year over year. Revenues of $9.30 billion easily surpassed the $8.84 billion analysts were looking for.
Bot only that, but Micron raised guidance fairly significantly for its fiscal Q4: earnings of between $2.35-2.65 per share is well ahead of the $2.02 consensus, with between $10.4-11.0 billion in revenues far beyond the $9.9 billion previously projected. As such, expect this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold)-based stock to ratchet up a bit in the days to come. Shares had already been up +51.2% year to date, and are up another +4% in late trading. (You can see the full Zacks Earnings Calendar here. https://www.zacks.com/earnings/earnings-calendar)
What to Expect from the Stock Market Thursday
We have a full plate of economic reports before tomorrow’s opening bell, with a new Trade Balance in Goods, Retail/Wholesale Inventories, Durable Goods and Pending Home Sales all accompanying the second revision to Q1 GDP. But what we’ll be paying extra close attention to tomorrow are the Weekly Jobless Claims.
Initial Jobless Claims touched 250K a couple weeks ago, second only to the 259K reported back in early October of last year (which appears like an anomalous blip on the screen). They came back down to 245K in last week’s report, and we hope to see this continue downward.
Continuing Claims, reported a week in arrears from new claims, clearly look they are breaking out to new levels. After spending much of 2025 chopping back and forth between 1.85-1.9 million, the past two weeks have shot up to a new range around 1.95 million. If this comes back down we won’t make too much of it. But touching that 2 million level on longer-term jobless claims will have a psychological effect on markets — and perhaps the Fed as well.
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Micron Technology, Inc. (MU): Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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