Stocks finished higher Friday on the final trading day of July, with a 13% surge in Amazon overpowering a sharp decline in Apple and a bond market that spent the week signaling it has lost patience with the Federal Reserve.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 1% to close at 25,373.85, the S&P 500 added 0.7% to finish at 7,489.72, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 276.97 points, or 0.53%, to 52,485.03. The Russell 2000 climbed 1.37%.

The session capped a violent week. Wednesday brought the Dow’s worst single-day decline since April 2025, a drop of nearly 2.2%, after the Fed left rates unchanged and the Nasdaq slipped into correction territory more than 10% below its early-June high. Thursday reversed it, with the Nasdaq up 2.8% and Microsoft jumping 16% on Azure growth.

Market movers

Amazon was the story. Revenue rose 20% to $200.6 billion, while AWS revenue jumped 37% to $42.2 billion — the cloud unit’s fastest growth in 18 quarters. The stock surged nearly 13%.

Apple went the other way. Shares sank after the company issued weak guidance for the current quarter, citing supply constraints. The stock fell close to 10% as chip shortages raised costs and cut into June-quarter production. Services and Greater China revenue both came in short.

Chip names could not hold their opening gains. An 18% surge in South Korea’s Kospi, led by SK Hynix hitting its 30% daily limit, had chip ETFs up 3.3% in early U.S. trading. Micron, SanDisk and Qualcomm all reversed into losses of 3% to 6%. Netflix and Eli Lilly each fell about 3%, and ExxonMobil dropped 3% as limited refinery capacity kept the oil major from fully capturing the quarter’s crude gains.

Coinbase fell 4.5% and GoDaddy dropped 10.9% following their second-quarter results.

The bond market is the real story

The 30-year Treasury yield spiked to its highest level since 2007, closing up about four basis points at 5.25%. The 10-year topped 4.7%, the highest since January 2025.

The move reflects eroding confidence in Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s commitment to curbing inflation. Warsh said this week that the central bank has no magic wand. Long-dated yields at 19-year highs are the market’s answer.

Commodities

Oil moved higher as Strait of Hormuz traffic began to falter following renewed hostilities. WTI traded near $85 a barrel and Brent reached $90. Wednesday’s escalation had already pushed Brent up 6.6% in a single session to $89.61 after the president said the U.S. would strike Iran in retaliation for an attempted attack on American forces.

July in the books

All three major indexes ended the week higher but closed July with monthly losses, reflecting the AI-linked selloff that ran through the month. The Philadelphia Semiconductor index fell more than 20% in July, its worst month since the housing bubble collapsed in late 2008. The Dow, however, posted its fourth straight winning month.

Beneath the chip wreckage, participation broadened. The S&P 500 equal-weighted index is on track for a fourth consecutive monthly gain. The share of S&P 500 components trading above their 200-day moving average reached 73% earlier this week, the highest since December 2024.

The capital spending question that drove July’s selling now has an answer. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet together project $720 billion to $745 billion in capital projects for 2026. Investors spent the month worried that spending was outrunning returns; Amazon’s cloud numbers gave them a reason to stop worrying, at least into the weekend.

Higher energy and gasoline prices have squeezed household budgets, though the University of Michigan’s latest reading showed a broad improvement in consumer sentiment.

Monday brings the ISM Manufacturing PMI for July, along with earnings from Marriott, Palantir, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Williams Companies, ONEOK and Diamondback Energy.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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