Weekly Markets Roundup: Records, an AI Earnings Boom, and Crypto's $2B ETF Exodus

The week in markets: May 24 to May 30, 2026. The holiday-shortened week (US markets were closed Monday for Memorial Day) turned into one of the strongest stretches of the year for equities and one of the weakest for crypto. Wall Street closed at fresh record highs and locked in a ninth straight weekly gain, powered by blowout AI-linked earnings from Dell and Snowflake. At the same time, bitcoin sank below $73,000 as spot ETFs hemorrhaged more than $2 billion, the hottest inflation print in nearly three years all but closed the door on a June rate cut, and oil whipsawed on a reported US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Here are the biggest stories of the week and what they mean heading into June.

Top Stock Stories of the Week

Wall Street's Ninth Straight Weekly Gain

The headline number is the streak. The S&P 500 finished Friday at a record 7,580.06, the Nasdaq Composite settled at 26,972.62, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 363.49 points to 51,032.46 per TheStreet's market wrap. That marked the S&P's ninth consecutive weekly advance. For the week the Nasdaq led with a gain of more than 2 percent, the S&P added more than 1 percent, and the Dow rose just under 1 percent. Zoom out to the full month and the spread is striking: the Nasdaq climbed roughly 8 percent in May, the S&P around 5 percent, and the Dow about 3 percent, an AI-led tape that has shrugged off both a sticky inflation backdrop and Middle East headlines. This extends the constructive picture tracked across our daily coverage, including the May 29 morning analysis.

Dell's Best Day On Record

The single most explosive move of the week belonged to Dell Technologies, which surged roughly 33 percent on Friday for its best day on record and closed the abbreviated week up nearly 40 percent per TheStreet. The catalyst was a first-quarter beat on both the top and bottom lines paired with raised full-year guidance, driven by surging demand for AI-optimized servers. Dell was among the best performers in both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, and a cluster of hardware names rose in sympathy. The read for market structure is that the AI capex cycle is still feeding through to the infrastructure layer, not just the chipmakers.

Snowflake Caps A 40% Week On The $6B AWS Deal

Snowflake rose roughly 40 percent on the week, the other standout of the AI earnings batch. The data-cloud company reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 product revenue of $1.33 billion, up 34 percent year over year, which it called the strongest sequential dollar growth in its history per Benzinga. The print landed alongside a reported multi-year, roughly $6 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services, the deal we flagged in the May 28 morning analysis. Together they reframed Snowflake as a clear AI-demand beneficiary rather than a consumption-growth question mark.

Marvell Rides AI Data Center Demand

Chips kept pace with software. Marvell Technology beat with EPS of $0.80 versus the $0.75 consensus and raised its outlook, guiding second-quarter revenue to about $2.7 billion against roughly $2.6 billion expected, on strong demand for custom silicon used in AI data centers per Bloomberg. The result reinforced the same theme that pushed Micron into the $1 trillion club earlier in the week on a UBS price-target hike, covered in our May 26 morning analysis: anything levered to AI memory and networking is being repriced higher.

Salesforce Is The Week's Cautionary Note

Not every AI story was a winner. Salesforce delivered a lukewarm revenue outlook, guiding fiscal second-quarter revenue to about $11.3 billion versus the roughly $11.4 billion analysts expected, a miss that revived fears about whether generative AI is starting to disrupt seat-based software economics per Bloomberg. The contrast matters: the same AI wave lifting Dell, Snowflake, and Marvell is now a question mark hanging over the incumbents whose pricing models predate it. Salesforce and HP, pressured by weak PC demand and rising memory costs, were the soft spots in an otherwise euphoric earnings week.

Top Crypto Stories of the Week

Bitcoin's $2 Billion ETF Exodus

Crypto was the mirror image of equities. Bitcoin slid below $73,000, near a six-week low, as US spot ETF demand reversed hard. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shed $527.84 million on Wednesday, its second-largest single-day outflow on record, just shy of the $528.3 million pulled on January 30, while the eleven US spot bitcoin ETFs together lost $733.43 million that session per CoinDesk. The complex has now bled more than $2 billion over two weeks, with a $1.29 billion dark-pool block sale in IBIT underscoring that institutional flows flipped from accumulation to distribution per The Block. The mechanism is self-reinforcing: redemptions force issuers to sell the underlying, which pressures spot, which drives further redemptions.

The Great Altcoin Rotation

The flows tell a rotation story, not just a risk-off one. Crypto funds globally saw $1.47 billion of outflows in the week, the third-largest weekly figure of 2026, with bitcoin accounting for roughly $1.315 billion and ether about $222 million per CoinGape. Yet single-asset altcoin products bucked the trend: XRP funds drew about $22 million and Solana funds about $15.6 million, with NEAR and Hyperliquid also attracting allocations. Institutions appear to be trimming the two majors while selectively adding the higher-beta layer-1 and layer-2 names, a structural shift in how the smart money is expressing crypto exposure.

Solana's Upgrade Roadmap And DEX Crown

Solana was the fundamental standout among the top-50. The network's Alpenglow upgrade, targeting roughly 150-millisecond block finality, is slated for the third quarter, alongside SIMD-0266, which is expected to cut token-operation compute by about 98 percent and free roughly 12 percent of block space. On usage, Solana surpassed Ethereum in month-to-date DEX volume, $36.87 billion versus $31.59 billion, and now carries more than $2.1 billion in outstanding on-chain loans. Bank of America also disclosed Solana ETF exposure, a notable institutional footprint. SOL traded near $85.49 even as bitcoin fell, a relative-strength signal worth watching.

XRP's RLUSD Push With OKX

XRP supplied the week's clearest partnership catalyst. Ripple and OKX announced a strategic tie-up to expand access to the XRP-based RLUSD stablecoin, which is now live for OKX spot trading across more than 280 pairs. Separately, the XRP Ledger Foundation floated a draft proposal called "AMM Swappable Curves" to extend the network's on-chain exchange beyond its constant-product model by adding StableSwap and concentrated liquidity. With spot XRP ETFs already drawing inflows, the token has behaved as a defensive altcoin during the bitcoin drawdown.

M&A, Partnerships, Deals

The week's marquee corporate tie-ups sat at the intersection of AI and crypto rails. The roughly $6 billion multi-year commitment between Snowflake and Amazon Web Services was the largest, anchoring Snowflake's blowout quarter and signaling that hyperscalers are locking in data-cloud capacity for the long AI buildout. On the digital-asset side, the Ripple and OKX partnership to scale the RLUSD stablecoin across more than 280 trading pairs deepened the institutional plumbing for tokenized dollars at a moment when stablecoin regulation is moving up the policy agenda. Both deals point the same direction: incumbents and exchanges racing to own the infrastructure layer rather than chase headline market share.

Regulatory & Macro

The macro print that defined the week was the April PCE price index, which rose 3.8 percent year over year, the hottest reading in nearly three years, with core PCE climbing to about 3.3 percent per InvestorIdeas. The monthly headline rose 0.4 percent, slightly cooler than the 0.5 percent feared, which gave risk assets just enough cover to keep climbing, but the trajectory is sticky and well above the Fed's 2 percent target. The policy implication is stark: traders are now pricing essentially zero rate cuts in 2026, with the funds rate seen holding at 3.50 to 3.75 percent and more than $34 million of positioning betting on no move at the June meeting per News.Bitcoin.com. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, sworn in May 23, inherits that 3.8 percent inflation problem and the political pressure that comes with it per CBS News.

Geopolitics supplied the other macro swing. US and Iranian negotiators reached a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, under which Iran would clear its mines within 30 days, sell oil freely, and the US would lift its naval blockade proportionally and issue some sanctions waivers per Axios. President Trump has said he is "not satisfied" and has not signed, and Iran has not confirmed, per CNN. Even so, the prospect of reopened supply sent oil sharply lower, with WTI easing toward $88.71 from the above-$91 spike earlier in the week, as detailed in our May 25 morning analysis.

Week Ahead: What To Watch

The catalyst stack for the first week of June is heavy on policy and flows:

• Trump's decision on the Iran MOU. A formal sign-off would pull WTI lower and confirm the supply reopening; a rejection would rebuild the war premium. Watch the 30-day mine-clearing timeline for any slippage.
• May nonfarm payrolls, due Friday June 5. With the Fed locked on inflation, a hot jobs number would further entrench the no-cut narrative, while a sharp miss would reopen the growth-scare debate. ISM manufacturing and services land earlier in the week.
• The bitcoin ETF outflow streak. The complex has now logged multiple consecutive days of redemptions. Whether flows stabilize or accelerate is the dominant near-term crypto driver, and a turn could set the tone across the altcoin rotation.
• The June 16-17 FOMC setup. Not next week, but every data point now feeds the first meeting under Chair Warsh, where a hold is the overwhelming base case.

This roundup is published for general market education. ThriveInMarkets is a market commentary publisher and does not provide personal investment advice. Price levels and figures referenced are observations, not instructions to transact. Verify all prices on your own platform before any decision.