Weekly Markets Roundup: Record Dow, Weak Jobs, and a Chip-Trade Reset

The week in markets: June 28 to July 4, 2026. It was a holiday-shortened week that still managed to pack in a record, a rotation, and a regime change for European crypto. A surprisingly soft June jobs report split Wall Street down the middle, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a fresh all-time high even as the Nasdaq wobbled under a semiconductor selloff. Underneath the indices, Meta reset the entire artificial-intelligence hardware narrative in a single headline, digital assets clawed back ground after a brutal June, and Europe's MiCA rulebook finally bared its teeth. Here is everything that mattered, and what to watch when the tape reopens.

Top Stock Stories of the Week

A Record Dow on the Weakest Jobs Print in Months

The marquee event was Thursday's June employment report, pulled forward a day because US markets closed Friday for the observed Independence Day holiday. The economy added just 57,000 jobs versus the roughly 115,000 economists expected, roughly half the consensus and a sharp cooldown from May's pace, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2 percent and weekly jobless claims eased to 215,000. Markets read it as the labor market finally loosening, which quieted the rate-hike chatter that had shadowed the tape since June. The reaction was a textbook rotation: the Dow surged 1.14 percent, nearly 600 points, to a record 52,900.07, the S&P 500 finished essentially flat at 7,483.24, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.80 percent. We tracked the intraday split in Thursday's evening review.

Meta Compute Crashes the Chip Trade

The week's most consequential corporate story broke on July 1, when reporting surfaced that Meta is building an internal cloud unit, dubbed Meta Compute, to rent out surplus AI training and inference capacity, and potentially access to its Llama models, to outside customers. Meta jumped about 9 percent to $612.91, but the knock-on effect was brutal for the picks-and-shovels crowd: if the largest buyers of GPUs start reselling capacity, the scarcity premium underpinning the whole complex looks less permanent. Micron fell about 10.6 percent, AMD dropped nearly 7 percent, and even Nvidia eased around 1.25 percent. It was the clearest example yet of the AI trade turning on itself.

Q2 Closes as the Best Quarter Since 2020

Before the jobs-day drama, the second quarter closed on June 30 with a flourish. A semiconductor-led rally lifted the S&P 500 to a record 7,499.36 and the Nasdaq to a record 26,213.72, capping what several desks called the strongest quarter for both benchmarks since 2020. Alphabet joined the Dow on June 29 in its first session as a blue-chip component and helped power a relief rally as a reported US-Iran truce held. The quarter that began with an AI-driven selloff ended with the major averages at or near records, a remarkable round trip detailed in our June 30 analysis.

Tesla Sinks on a Delivery Beat, Rivian Soars

Earnings-season previews arrived through the EV delivery reports. Tesla topped Q2 estimates with more than 480,000 deliveries yet fell about 7 percent on Thursday, a classic case of a beat that was not good enough against elevated expectations and thinning margins. The mirror image was Rivian, which delivered 12,194 vehicles against roughly 11,000 expected and raised its full-year outlook to 65,000 to 70,000, sending shares up about 5 percent as its R2 ramp cleared a key manufacturing test. Apple, meanwhile, bucked Thursday's chip-driven softness with a 4.84 percent gain.

Top Crypto Stories of the Week

Bitcoin Reclaims $61K to Start a 'Green' July

After a punishing June, digital assets caught the softer-rate tailwind. Bitcoin opened Friday around $61,500, up about 2.5 percent, extending a bounce off the ~$58,000 lows that marked its worst stretch since September 2024. The overhang is real, though: spot Bitcoin ETFs bled a record $4.06 billion in June, one of the heaviest monthly outflows on record. Ethereum firmed above $1,700, up roughly 5.6 percent, and quietly outshone Bitcoin where it counted, with ETH spot ETF inflows briefly outpacing Bitcoin's for two straight sessions late in the week.

XRP, Solana and Hyperliquid Defy the ETF Exodus

The most important crypto story of the week was where money actually went. While Bitcoin and Ether funds hemorrhaged, the newer single-asset products drew capital: XRP-linked ETFs added $59.4 million in June and HYPE funds pulled in $161 million, and on July 2 SOL, XRP and HYPE spot ETFs all posted net inflows, with XRP attracting the largest daily haul. It is an early sign that ETF demand is broadening beyond the two majors into the top-50 names, a structural shift worth watching rather than a one-day blip.

Hyperliquid Crosses $1 Billion in Revenue

Hyperliquid quietly crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue, generating more than $80 million in fees over the trailing 30 days, enough to rank third among all protocols behind only stablecoin giants Tether and Circle. Nearly all of those fees route into automatic HYPE buybacks, with a second buyback stream slated to begin October 3. With over 61 percent of the 1 billion HYPE supply still locked, the token's monthly core-contributor unlock on July 6 is the near-term supply event to note.

Solana's Tokenized-Stock Boom

Solana kept building real usage. Tokenized stock trading on Solana hit an all-time high of $644 million in a single day on June 24, helping drive SOL's rebound above $82, while the network's real-world-asset total value locked reached a record $3.4 billion and on-chain stablecoin supply topped $16 billion. The theme tying XRP, SOL and HYPE together is on-chain revenue and tokenized assets, not speculation, and it is where the sharpest crypto narratives are forming.

M&A, Partnerships, Deals

Dealflow stayed busy into the holiday. The headline was Meta's Meta Compute pivot, effectively a bid to turn its enormous data-center buildout into a merchant cloud business that competes with the hyperscalers. In traditional M&A, Bridgepoint agreed to acquire Kayne Anderson Real Estate for about $1.39 billion on June 29, and RV-and-marine supplier Patrick Industries announced a combination with LCI Industries on July 1, a sizeable consolidation in the recreational-vehicle supply chain. Honeywell also continued to press ahead with its aerospace spinoff, part of the broader wave of conglomerates unbundling to unlock value.

Regulatory & Macro

Two regulatory currents defined the week. In the US, the soft June jobs print reshaped the Fed conversation: with Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish June stance still fresh, traders took a September rate hike largely off the table, though futures still leave room for a possible move later in the autumn. A cooling labor market hands the Fed cover to stay patient rather than tighten. In Europe, the MiCA transitional period ended on July 1, and the filter was severe: only around 210 of more than 1,200 previously registered crypto firms secured a full licence, and Binance entered the month without EU authorisation after withdrawing its Greek application. Regulated venues also dropped non-compliant stablecoins, cementing USDC and EURC over USDT in the bloc, a shift we unpacked in our MiCA guide. On commodities, WTI crude held near $68 as Strait of Hormuz shipping normalised and Saudi exports rebounded, prompting analysts to trim 2026 oil forecasts, while gold firmed toward $4,137 on renewed safe-haven demand.

Week Ahead: What to Watch

The calendar reloads quickly after the holiday. Here is what could set direction:

• Monday, July 6 - Markets reopen. US cash trading resumes after the long weekend, and any weekend headlines will meet the first real liquidity since Thursday. The same day brings Hyperliquid's monthly core-contributor HYPE unlock, the week's notable crypto supply event.
• Wednesday, July 8 - June FOMC minutes. The record of the June 17 meeting is due around mid-week and should reveal how divided the committee is under Chair Warsh, a key tell for how it reads this month's jobs miss.
• Friday, July 11 - Rain token unlock. The second half of the month's roughly $1.9 billion in scheduled crypto unlocks continues to test whether the ETF-inflow names can absorb fresh supply.
• Looking to mid-July - CPI and bank earnings. June CPI lands July 14 and the Q2 earnings season kicks off the same week, with the big banks (Citi, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on July 14, JPMorgan on July 15) opening the reporting cycle. These are the next major catalysts once the holiday lull clears.

The second half of 2026 opens with a record Dow, a Fed handed a reason to stay patient, and a crypto market rotating into names with real on-chain revenue. The counterweights are a semiconductor complex still digesting the Meta Compute shock and a valuation debate in megacap tech that has not resolved. For the live schedule as trading resumes, see our economic calendar, and for the daily blow-by-blow follow our Market Insights coverage.

ThriveInMarkets publishes market commentary for general information only and does not provide personal investment advice. Prices are live or last-close levels as labeled and move quickly; levels cited are technical reference points, not instructions to buy or sell any asset.