For a week, the chipmakers had been getting beaten up. On Thursday, June 25, one earnings report turned the whole mood around.

Micron Technology opened the day on fire, and it dragged the rest of Wall Street up with it. The memory maker’s blowout quarter, reported after Wednesday’s bell, did exactly what the market needed: it reassured nervous investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is still very much alive and spending. But the celebration came with a catch. Minutes before the open, the Commerce Department reported that its Personal Consumption Expenditures price index — the inflation gauge the Federal Reserve watches most closely — climbed at a 4.1% annual pace in May, the hottest reading since April 2023, a leftover sting from the Iran war working its way into prices.

So stocks rose, but they rose looking over their shoulder. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added about 0.65%, pushing up from Wednesday’s close of 51,848.90. The S&P 500 gained roughly 0.52% from 7,358.22, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite managed about 0.24% from 25,476.64, held back even as chips soared because investors were trimming elsewhere. The small-cap Russell 2000 tacked on 0.37%. Not a stampede — but after the bruising semiconductor sell-off of the past several days, plenty of traders would take it.

Market movers

Micron was the whole story at the open, jumping roughly 18%. The numbers explain the excitement. The company earned an adjusted $25.11 a share, blowing past the $20.78 analysts polled by LSEG had penciled in, on revenue of $41.46 billion that more than quadrupled from a year ago and sailed past the $35.85 billion Wall Street wanted. Then came the part that really moved the stock: Micron told investors to expect around $50 billion in sales this quarter, far above the $43.58 billion forecast, with cloud-memory revenue up more than 300% to $13.77 billion. Analysts at Bank of America Global Research doubled down on their bullish call, saying the results point to a sturdier, longer memory cycle built on AI demand.

The relief rippled straight through the sector. Qualcomm climbed about 10% after using its investor day to nearly double its 2029 target for non-phone revenue to roughly $40 billion, from $22 billion, as it muscles into data-center chips and servers. The rest of the group rode the wave — Sandisk, Western Digital, KLA, Lam Research and Applied Materials all rose in sympathy.

It wasn’t only chips. Bio-Techne rocketed about 19.6% after agreeing to sell itself to drug giant Merck for $73 a share. The retail crowd kept its grip on Wendy’s, sending the burger chain up another 7% and leaving it roughly 32% higher on the week — a reminder that small investors, not just earnings, are still moving stocks. SpaceX, fresh off the largest IPO ever, rose 4.3% to $160.98.

Not everyone joined the party. Hertz Global Holdings slid about 6.1%, Dollar Tree dropped 3.6%, and dialysis company DaVita fell 3.3%. Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, summed up the turn nicely, saying Micron’s results gave the market fresh proof that the AI spending wave hasn’t crested — and that investors seem willing to look past short-term turbulence as long as the earnings keep coming.

The economic data underneath was murkier. Orders for big-ticket durable goods tumbled a steeper-than-expected 4.5% in May, to $332.1 billion, the Census Bureau said, snapping a two-month winning streak. And in a quieter headline, JPMorgan Chase named two executives to new co-president roles, the latest move in CEO Jamie Dimon’s slow-motion search for a successor.

Commodities and volatility

At the gas pump, the news kept getting better. Brent crude traded just under $74 a barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate sat around $70, both near pre-war lows, as oil moved freely again through the Strait of Hormuz. Gold caught its breath near $4,000 after slipping below that line on Wednesday for the first time in seven months. The Cboe Volatility Index, Wall Street’s fear gauge, which had spiked toward 19.5 during the week’s tech scare, drifted lower as nerves settled. Bonds were the one place the hot inflation print bit: after the 10-year Treasury yield tumbled below 4.5% a day earlier on cheaper oil, the stubborn price data gave traders a reason to pause.

The question now is whether the chip rally has the legs to carry through the close, with Qualcomm’s investor day, the final read on first-quarter growth, and Darden Restaurants earnings still on deck. One thing the morning made clear: Micron bought the bulls some breathing room, but that 4.1% inflation number keeps the Fed and Chair Kevin Warsh right in the middle of the story — and keeps the market honest.

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