After the mess that was last week, Tuesday is looking a lot calmer.
S&P 500 futures were up 0.4% early Tuesday morning. Nasdaq futures gained 0.6%. The Dow lagged a bit — only about 60 points, around 0.1% — which makes sense given that Dow is heavy on the value and industrial names and this recovery is being driven mostly by tech.
Monday itself was already a partial comeback. S&P 500 rose 0.3%, Nasdaq climbed 0.9%. The Dow actually slipped 80 points Monday because investors were clearly in “buy tech” mode rather than “buy banks and healthcare” mode. Funny how fast the rotation reverses itself.
Chip Stocks Specifically. That’s What’s Moving.
Last week chipmakers got absolutely crushed. Broadcom’s earnings miss dragged the whole sector down, rate hike fears piled on, and anything with “semiconductor” in the description had a rough few days.
This week those same stocks are the ones leading the bounce.
Traders who sold out of chip names last week are apparently coming back in. The logic being — a bad jobs report and a rough week doesn’t actually change whether AI needs chips, whether data centers keep getting built, whether the long-term demand story holds up. It just changed the price temporarily.
When prices drop fast on macro fear rather than any actual change in the business, some buyers see that as an opportunity. That seems to be what’s happening right now.
South Korea Had a Wild Two Days
Monday, Kospi dropped more than 8% at its worst point before trimming losses to around 4%. That’s a brutal intraday swing. The kind that makes headlines.
Tuesday? Up 7%.
That’s not a small move. That’s the market basically saying “okay we panicked a bit on Monday, let’s buy back what we sold.” Japan’s Nikkei was up more than 2% Tuesday as well. Asia broadly followed Wall Street’s more positive tone heading into the session.
The speed of these moves is the thing worth noting. One day everyone’s running for the exit, next day the same people are fighting to get back in at slightly lower prices. This is what high volatility actually looks like in practice — not just big down days but big up days right after that leave you dizzy trying to keep track.
Iran and Israel — Still Happening, Stocks of Shrugging
Situation hasn’t resolved. Iran paused strikes against Israel on Monday but made clear the pause is conditional — if Israeli operations in Lebanon continue, attacks could resume. Netanyahu said publicly the conflict is “not yet over.”
So the geopolitical risk is still very much there. Oil could spike again on any escalation. Inflation expectations could shift. The whole thing remains a wildcard.
But markets right now seem to be choosing to look past it, at least for Tuesday. Not because the situation isn’t serious — it clearly is — but because traders have a pretty short attention span for background risks when the immediate data isn’t getting worse. As long as oil doesn’t make another big move and no major new escalation happens, the Middle East stuff stays in the background rather than driving the daily narrative.
That can change fast. But for now it’s background noise.
SpaceX Is Coming Friday and Nobody Knows What to Make of It
The elephant in the room for the rest of this week is SpaceX pricing its IPO at $135 a share, targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion. Biggest listing in Wall Street history if it goes through at that number.
$1.75 trillion. Let that sit for a second. That’s bigger than most countries’ economies.
The timing is genuinely interesting. Last week the market just had its worst tech selloff in over a year. Rate hike fears are alive. Inflation data drops Wednesday and Thursday before the SpaceX debut Friday. If CPI comes in hot Wednesday the whole risk appetite conversation gets complicated right before the biggest IPO ever tries to land.
Two ways to read SpaceX’s effect on the market. One — it sucks a massive amount of capital toward it and other stocks see outflows as investors free up cash to participate. Two — a successful mega-IPO that pops on day one reminds everyone that AI-era valuations still have buyers and lifts overall sentiment.
Which one happens probably depends a lot on what Wednesday’s inflation number looks like.
Where Things Actually Stand Right Now
The recovery this week is real but it’s early and fragile. Two decent days after last week doesn’t undo the damage or answer the underlying question — are rates going higher or not?
That answer comes Wednesday with CPI. If inflation is cooling, the rate hike narrative loses steam, tech and crypto and everything else that sold off gets more room to breathe. If inflation surprises to the upside, Friday’s SpaceX debut becomes a genuine stress test for whether this market still has appetite for massive valuations.
For now though — futures are green, Asia bounced hard, chip stocks are recovering. After last week that counts for something.