Yahoo Finance Live: Daily Market Coverage - June 25, 2026 3PM - 5PM (ET)

Equal-weight indices outperform mega-caps

The S&P 500 Equal Weight rose 0.6% while the cap-weighted version was flat, as the MAG 7 ETF fell 2.23% and has gone nowhere for nine months.

Industrial and small-cap strength

The Russell 2000 gained 0.33% and industrials led sector performance with Caterpillar hitting another record high, up 82% year-to-date.

Tech faces near-term pressure

Consumer discretionary dragged the market down 1.5% while the Nasdaq 100 saw broad weakness among top holdings except Micron, which surged 16.6%.

Micron earnings confirm buildout legitimacy

Micron crushed earnings expectations and secured 3-5 year supply contracts with hyperscalers, indicating the AI infrastructure buildout remains in early innings with several years of growth ahead.

Hardware 'picks and shovels' trade emerges

Investors are rotating from cloud hyperscalers into infrastructure suppliers like HPE, Dell, Lenovo, and Cisco, which have outperformed recently as they supply the physical AI buildout.

Software integration phase approaching

The next evolution may focus on data integration platforms like Snowflake and Databricks that enable companies to organize training data for AI models.

Apple raises prices across product lines

Apple increased prices roughly 20% on select Macs, iPads, and home devices due to surging memory costs, with iPhone price hikes expected this fall, sending shares down 5% on demand concerns.

Microsoft follows with Xbox increases

Microsoft announced Xbox price hikes of $100-$150 due to memory chip shortages, contributing to the stock falling to its lowest level in almost three years.

Consumer impact of component shortages

The price increases demonstrate that memory constraints have transitioned from enterprise supply issues to direct consumer price sensitivity, potentially impacting demand elasticity.

Qualcomm targets data center market

Qualcomm announced plans to generate $15 billion in data center revenue by fiscal 2029 through custom CPUs and ASICs, with Meta and Microsoft already committed as customers.

IBM extends Moore's Law

IBM unveiled a nano-stack architecture breakthrough promising 50% better performance and 70% energy efficiency, though production remains approximately five years out.

NVIDIA dominance faces challenges

While NVIDIA remains the dominant AI chip provider, competitors including Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel are introducing alternatives to CUDA software and custom silicon designs to capture market share.