Stocks faded the bounce, oil fell off a cliff, and tomorrow is all about inflation
It was a weird day, but with a lot of emotions. Tomorrow even more emotions with the GDP report and PCE inflation
Wednesday, June 24 in one breath: the S&P 500 looked sleepy on the surface, closing fractionally red, but the day was anything but - it gave back a near-percent rally, oil collapsed as the Strait of Hormuz reopened (at least on Truth Social Media), and the whole tape is now leaning on a single line going into tomorrow’s inflation report.
What actually happened today
It started out green. The index opened at 7,371 and ran as high as 7,428, up about 0.85%, before the air came out of it around lunchtime. By the early afternoon it had slid all the way to 7,337, which actually poked below the 50-day line, before buyers dragged it back to close at 7,358, down a tiny 0.10%. So the headline number looks calm, but the path was not: a give-back of nearly a full percent from the highs, a tag below a key trend line, and a save into the bell.
This was not broad panic. The Dow actually finished up 0.35% and homebuilders had a great day after KB Home’s results. It was a tech-and-chips story, the same one that did the real damage on Tuesday, when the S&P dropped 1.44% as the AI-memory complex got hammered. The nerves heading into Wednesday’s close were specific: everyone was waiting on Micron’s earnings after the bell and the inflation print the next morning, and nobody wanted to be heavy into either.
On the first of those, the news was good. Micron printed the strongest quarter (Overall RAM prices went up 30x … so no surprise) in its history after the close - earnings of $25.11 against the $20.28 the Street wanted, record revenue around $41.5 billion, and guidance pointing toward roughly $50 billion next quarter. The stock jumped somewhere between 5% and 9% in the after-hours, erasing the day’s loss. That is a real tailwind for the chip names into Thursday’s open, and it is the one clear thing arguing against the bears tomorrow.
The market is balancing on one line
Here is why that flat close matters more than it looks. Strip away the noise and the S&P is doing one thing: pressing on its rising 50-day moving average at 7,349. Wednesday’s close sat just 0.13% above it, the second straight session glued to that line, and the intraday low actually traded through it before recovering. That is the textbook definition of a level being tested, and it is being tested for the second time in a couple of weeks.
