Stocks Flat Early Aside from Tech as Oil Falls

Published as of: June 22, 2026, 9:15 a.m. ET

(Monday market open) Major indexes wobbled early, seeking direction after a long weekend that included tense negotiations between the U.S. and Iran and mixed signals on the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping traffic remains sparse. Today's calendar is devoid of major economic and earnings news, but things ramp up as the week progresses. Thursday brings May Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) prices as well as the third estimate of first quarter GDP.

Earnings are light from a calendar perspective but potentially heavy in terms of impact this week thanks to scheduled reports from FedEx (FDX) late Tuesday and Micron (MU) late Wednesday. Chip shares rose this morning, giving the Nasdaq Composite a tailwind. This week includes several large Treasury auctions beginning with one for $69 billion in 2-year notes tomorrow. Results could help determine the path of yields, which remain elevated despite lower oil prices. The 10-year note yield briefly hit 4.5% overnight for the first time since June 12 and is increasingly divorced from oil.

Stocks ended last week on a positive note, paring some of Wednesday's Federal Reserve-driven  losses. The S&P 500 Index climbed 0.93% last week, while the Nasdaq ended the week 2.4% higher. Friday's move wasn't a particularly broad rally, however, as just five of the 11 S&P 500 sectors closed higher. More policy-sensitive short-term Treasury yields continued their climb after the hawkish Fed meeting, flattening the yield curve as futures trading built in 70% chances of a rate hike by September, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

1. Is the "June swoon" for real? Sometimes, the market likes its clever phrases. Think "Sell in May and go away." The "June swoon" is another example: June has a reputation for being one of the weaker months historically. But that reputation may be due for a refresh. While June has produced the second-weakest average monthly return in the S&P 500 Index going back to 1957, more recent numbers paint a rosier picture. According to Barchart, since 2010 the index has gained an average of about 0.74% in June, making it the seventh-best calendar month on that basis. What's more, five of the last six Junes (going back to 2020) have ended positively by at least 1%. The outlier was June 2022, when the S&P 500 dropped by 8.4%. So far this year, a modest "swoon" could be in the cards. And with major indexes all trying to push back to new highs, closing the month in positive territory could be a tall order. "I still think this is a market that is being supported by strong earnings per share growth, which is coming from AI," noted Nathan Peterson, director of derivatives research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, or SCFR. "It's imperative that the AI infrastructure buildout theme remains intact."
    
2. Could bitcoin be bottoming? After retesting its annual lows around the $59,000 level, bitcoin is trying to inch higher, and its recent low seems, for now, to be holding as support. Crypto was weak in Thursday's trading, likely due to the dollar strengthening on the heels of the Fed meeting. One method to confirm possible bottoms in the price is the mechanism within bitcoin that ensures blocks in the blockchain keep getting mined, said Jim Ferraioli, director of crypto research and strategy at SCFR. Known as bitcoin's mining difficulty adjustment, it adjusts the difficulty of mining blocks in periods of price weakness to make sure block production is, on average, every 10 minutes, Ferraioli said. "During selloffs, mining difficulty is adjusted lower, so the confirmation we look for is the initial adjustment higher," he said. Difficulty is now back near early February levels. Adjustments occur every 2,016 blocks, or roughly two weeks, and the next one is expected later this week. If it shows an increase, it could be a signal that the latest selloff may have run its course.
    
3. Farewell, Greenspan: Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's death at age 100 started the week on a sad note. The Fed has become far more transparent since the days when investors tried to read hawkish or dovish signals from the thickness of the bundle of papers Greenspan carried into meetings. Greenspan never held post-meeting press conferences and didn't even publicly announce meeting outcomes until several years into his tenure that began in 1987 That revolutionary change occurred in a short press release on February 4, 1994, in which the Fed announced that it was raising rates as it moved toward "a less accommodative stance in monetary policy in order to sustain and enhance the economic expansion," In a third and final paragraph, the release said Greenspan "decided to announce this action immediately so as to avoid any misunderstanding of the Committees' purposes," given that it was the first policy firming since early 1989. How times have changed.

• Chip and AI names started the week on a positive note. Shares of Micron rolled up 4% early gains today, accompanied by solid upward moves in shares of Western Digital (WDC) and SanDisk (SNDK) after Micron's South Korean rival SK Hynix rose more than 5% earlier. Beyond the memory side of the chip market, shares of Intel (INTC) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) also made 2.5% gains. Nvidia (NVDA) hosts its shareholder meeting Wednesday.
   
• SpaceX (SPCX) fell 4.6% early today, making it one of the worst-performing large stocks in the market. At around $175 per share, the stock still trades well above last week's low point of just below $150. Though not a member of the S&P 500, the stock is expected to get fast-track approval to the Nasdaq-100^® (NDX), Reuters reported, perhaps within a month. KeyBanc initiated coverage of the stock with a "sector weight" rating.
   
• Shares of crypto-related stocks, including Strategy (MSTR), climbed early today as bitcoin futures edged up.
   
• Alphabet (GOOGL) fell 2.14% in early action, possibly hurt by a Reuters report that a U.S. scientist planned to leave Google DeepMind to join AI startup Anthropic.
   
• Some energy stocks climbed in early action despite a sharp drop in the price of crude oil. U.S. crude futures fell 0.13% and traded below $77 per barrel on news of progress over the weekend in peace talks between Iran and the U.S., specifically on the status of the conflict in Lebanon and the establishment of a line of communications between Iran and the U.S. to avoid incidents in the strait, Barron's reported.
   
• Chevron (CVX) rose 1.4% after announcing a 20-year agreement with Microsoft (MSFT) to provide electricity to a data center Microsoft is building in Texas.
   
• Playboy (PLBY) rose 6% after the company announced it was repurchasing 16.6 million shares.
   
• Apogee Therapeutics (APGE) soared 47% this morning on news it has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by AbbVie (ABBV) for $135.11 per share, Briefing.com reported.

Warsh emphasizes inflation: Last week's episode of the On Investing podcast looked at the first Federal Reserve meeting under Kevin Warsh. Of note, every time the conversation turned to the Fed's dual mandate, "his emphasis was on the inflation side, not really much at all on the labor market side of the mandate," said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at SCFR.

The PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX—candlesticks) has managed to bounce off its 20-day moving average (blue line) twice over the past month. And from a longer-term view, the index is still sitting roughly 60% north of its 200-day moving average (purple line), which is rather extreme from a historical perspective. Notable when looking more closely at the daily price action is that day-to-day volatility has increased (large candles) and the frequency of long red daily candles is increasing as well, suggesting some caution may be warranted as the index has been opening near the high of the day but closing near the low.