Markets News, July 10, 2026: S&P 500, Nasdaq Post Weekly Gains; Stocks Inch Higher; SK Hynix Soars in US Debut

Circle Stock Rises After Regulators Greenlight National Trust Bank Application

FROM 1 hr 8 min ago

Shares of Circle (CRCL) rose on Friday after the company received the greenlight from federal regulators to operate a national trust bank, a major win for the stablecoin issuer. 

Circle on Friday said it had received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to launch First National Digital Currency Bank, a national trust bank that will operate as Circle National Trust. The approval gives Circle the ability to directly manage the reserves that back USDC, the world’s largest stablecoin with about $73 billion in circulation.

The approval also consolidates oversight of Circle under federal regulars. Being a national trust simplifies compliance for financial firms otherwise navigating 50 state-level regulatory regimes. 

Shares of Circle were up 5% in recent trading after surging as much as 14% early in the session. Still, slumping cryptocurrency prices and uncertainty about the fate of industry-friendly legislation has weighed on crypto prices and stocks this year, leaving Circle shares down 17%.

SpaceX Stock Has Traded for a Month. Investors Are Waiting for the Rocket Ride To Start

FROM 1 hr 53 min ago

SpaceX stock has been out for a month. But while backers of the company see big things ahead, it’s been quiet so far.

Friday marks the end of the fourth week of trading for SpaceX (SPCX), the Elon Musk-led rocket, connectivity and AI company. The shares, recently down more than 2% at around $148, are holding below the $150 level at which they opened trading a month ago.

July hasn’t been kind to SpaceX investors. The stock, which this week booked its lowest-ever close, finished June just under $171, leaving them down 13% this month while the S&P 500 has managed a slight advance.

Two catalysts experts thought might help the shares reclaim some of the upward momentum they enjoyed post-IPO don’t seem to have delivered. Broadly bullish outlooks from Wall Street analysts —Visible Alpha’s average price target for the stock, above $293, suggests a near-doubling from current levels and a record high—arrived in bulk this week. And the shares were officially added to the Nasdaq 100 index, generally seen as bullish.

Neither development has, in the short term, moved the needle much. The stock has contended with a more challenging environment for risk assets, with tech stocks coming under pressure; some experts now say investors seem more cautious about their AI picks, even if they aren’t dropping the theme entirely. Uncertainty about the Fed’s path forward for interest rates may also be an overhang.

Meantime, investors have cooled on space stocks broadly, even as competitor Blue Origin has lately raised money at a big valuation. And Vanda Research data suggests that broad single-stock buying by retail investors, seen as a key constituency of SpaceX, has cooled this year.

Experts generally say it’s risky to trade stocks on IPO day, with companies’ shares often cooling even after hot starts. SpaceX has done just that, giving investors an opportunity to reassess the shares.

–David Marino-Nachison

Renewed Fighting in Iran Revives Potential for a ‘Cascade’ of Economic Consequences

FROM 2 hr 49 min ago

A flare-up of fighting between the U.S. and Iran this week rekindled the risks the conflict poses to the U.S. economy.

Oil prices rose this week after the U.S. and Iran reportedly traded strikes. The uptick in prices was relatively subdued, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, trading at $76 a barrel Friday, up about $4 from before the fighting restarted.

However, the fresh wave of bombings underscored that the threat of economic damage from the conflict was not dispelled last month when the two sides signed a tentative peace deal.

So far, the U.S. economy has avoided the worst-case scenario forecasters feared at the outset of the conflict, in which oil could surge to more than $130 a barrel and plunge the U.S. economy into a recession. Higher fuel prices are a concern beyond the increased costs at the pump: many companies will pass on higher transportation or manufacturing costs to consumers across the economy.

It’s not guaranteed the U.S. will continue to avoid that scenario, economists said, especially if the fighting intensifies.

“If the peace deal breaks, it won’t just raise oil prices; it would also increase pressure on AI supply chains in Asia, force central banks to be hawkish, tighten financial conditions, and could shift the outcome of the U.S. midterms,” wrote Ryan Sweet, chief global economist at Oxford Economics. “The cascade runs fast.”

The key economic issue in the conflict is control of the Strait of Hormuz. The crucial waterway between Iran and Oman is the shipping channel through which 20% of the world’s crude oil is normally dispatched to global markets. Iran’s closure of the strait to ship traffic bottled up oil supply and pushed up fuel prices in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Reopening the strait was a major condition in the peace deal President Donald Trump signed last month, and has been tested by the attacks on vessels this week. If the strait reopens and stays open, oil prices could fall to prewar levels of around $60 to $70 a barrel, Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macroeconomics, wrote in a commentary.

Not so if the war heats up again, especially if global oil reserves begin to run dry, Alamariu wrote.

“Oil grinds toward $90 to $120 per barrel, and risks going higher still if reserves deplete quickly, or on higher escalation,” he wrote. “Inflation pressures would re-emerge globally.”

Alamariu said another cease-fire agreement is likely, since both sides have economic incentives to end the conflict, but that more flare-ups are also possible, and the uncertainty could persist even if another peace deal takes effect.

“Barring a clear Iranian defeat or U.S. capitulation, markets could view any new deal as more tenuous than the last, so the political risk premium may stay more elevated,” he wrote.

–Diccon Hyatt

SK Hynix Stock Soars In U.S. Debut

FROM 3 hr 44 min ago

South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix (SKHYV) soared in its American debut on Friday, suggesting U.S. investors remain bullish on memory stocks despite their recent pullback. 

SK Hynix American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, began trading Friday at $172, about 15% above the offering price set yesterday. The stock held steady through its first hour of trading, and was recently changing hands for about $174 a share. 

SK Hynix’s is the largest ever foreign listing on a U.S. exchange, netting the leading global supplier of high-bandwidth memory and NAND flash memory more than $26 billion. The offering was reportedly seven times oversubscribed. 

The listing comes at a critical moment for the memory and chip stocks that led the market to record highs last quarter. Shares of U.S. competitor Micron (MU) were up 325% since the start of the year when the company’s blow-out earnings report last month lifted them to a record high, but the stock’s since slumped about 20%. SK Hynix and Korean peer Samsung have followed similar trajectories, with the latter tumbling earlier this week despite reporting a 19-fold increase in quarterly profit. 

Investors are debating the sustainability of the chipmakers’ meteoric growth and taking profits from the everything rally’s biggest winners. Some analysts believe the recent pullback could signal a shift in the rally as investors become more discerning with their dollars. 

Delta Stock Slides Despite Topping Earnings Estimates

FROM 4 hr 41 min ago

Delta Air Lines (DAL) beat Wall Street estimates with its second-quarter earnings report as strong demand offset rising fuel costs. Shares are falling anyway. 

The company said this morning it earned an adjusted $1.56 per share on $19.76 billion in revenue, up 19% year-over-year. Both figures topped the consensus estimates among Wall Street analysts, despite what Delta CEO Ed Bastian said was the carrier’s “highest quarterly fuel expense in our history.” Oil and jet fuel prices skyrocketed last quarter after conflict in the Middle East closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint in the global oil supply chain. 

Delta’s third-quarter forecasts also topped estimates. The company expects revenue growth to be in the mid-teens, and earnings to be somewhere between $2 and $2.50 per share. 

Despite the strong results, Delta shares were down more than 2% in recent trading. The stock entered the day up nearly 30% since the start of the year. 

Delta was the first of the major U.S. airlines to report results. United Airlines (UAL) is expected to report Wednesday afternoon, followed by Southwest Airlines (LUV) and American Airlines (AAL) later in the month. 

–Aaron McDade

Meta’s Shifting AI Strategy Continues To Push the Stock Higher

FROM 5 hr 31 min ago

Meta was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 on Friday as investors continued to cheer the social media giant’s aggressive push to monetize its AI investments. 

In an internal memo, Meta laid out plans to double its cloud computing capacity to 14 gigawatts next year and begin producing its own AI chips with designer Broadcom (AVGO) in September, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Shares jumped nearly 5% yesterday, and the stock was up 6% in recent trading. Friday’s gains pared Meta stock’s year-to-date losses to about 4%. The stock came into this week down nearly 12% since the start of the year. 

Wall Street started to ask questions about Meta’s AI infrastructure spending this year, with some investors expressing concern the social media giant is spending hundreds of billions on data centers for its own use, unlike Alphabet (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN) whose computing capacity is sold to cloud customers. 

Meta has been one of Big Tech’s laggards this year. It was the only Magnificent Seven stock to fall in both the first and second quarters. It’s 15% decline in the first half was the second-worst of the Mag Seven, trailing only Microsoft’s (MSFT) 23% slump. 

Sentiment has improved in the second half. Shares popped 9% on July 1 following reports the company is considering renting out unused computing capacity to third parties, similar to SpaceX’s (SPCX) $1.25 billion-per-month agreement with Anthropic. Shares are up nearly 20% since that report. 

Bank of America analyst Justin Post, in a note earlier this week, argued Wall Street is undervaluing Meta’s AI infrastructure. Post estimates investors are valuing Meta’s computing capacity at just $4 billion per gigawatt, compared with Amazon’s $59 billion and Alphabet’s $110 billion. Post, however, believes it’s worth $12 billion per GW, with the potential for “significant upside considering specialized AI capacity that Meta is building.” According to Post, SpaceX’s recent deals with Anthropic and Google valued its specialized capacity at about $50 billion per GW.

Investor enthusiasm for Meta’s AI push has offset regulatory and legal headwinds facing its core social media business. The EU Commission on Friday said in a preliminary report that Meta violated its Digital Services Act with “addictive” features like infinite scroll and autoplay. The commission told Meta to change the violating design features, or risk facing a fine of up to 6% of its global revenue.

Meta faces mounting scrutiny of its social media platforms and their impact on youth mental health and safety. The company lost two trials centered on child safety earlier this year, potentially setting a precedent for a slew of similar cases being litigated. 

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh Names Members Of Reform Task Force

FROM 6 hr 28 min ago

The future of the Fed is in the hands of a group of bankers, business leaders, academics, and even a video game executive.

On Thursday, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh released the names of the members of five task forces he established to rethink key aspects of how the central bank does business. Reforming the Fed’s operations is a top priority for the new Fed chair, who announced the existence of the task forces at his first press conference last month.

The groups will recommend changes to the Fed’s communications with the public; its approach to controlling inflation; its use of economic data; its balance sheet of financial assets; and its view of the changes AI technology could bring to the economy. Here’s who Warsh tapped to lead those task forces. Four of the 15 are professors at Harvard, where Warsh studied law.

Click here to read the full story on the Fed’s new task forces and their leaders. 

–Diccon Hyatt

SK Hynix’s U.S. Listing Will Test Wall Street’s Appetite For Turbulent Memory Stocks

FROM 7 hr 23 min ago

South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix is set to make its U.S. debut today. It will be one of the largest share sales ever—and the market’s response could be telling.

SK Hynix priced its American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, which each represent one-tenth of a common share, at $149. The price sets the company up to raise more than $26 billion, making it the most lucrative U.S. listing by a foreign company ever, when ADSs begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SKHYV” today. (They will take their permanent ticker, “SKHY,” on Monday.)

SK Hynix is the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory, accounting for more than 50% of the global market, and the second-largest supplier of NAND devices, according to regulatory filings. Demand for its technology skyrocketed in recent years as tech giants raced to equip data centers for training and running artificial intelligence. Supply couldn’t keep up with demand, causing prices for memory and data storage devices to skyrocket over the past year.

SK Hynix and its peers have effectively been printing money of late. SK Hynix’s revenue tripled to about $34.5 billion, and its profit quintupled to $26.5 billion, in the first quarter. South Korean competitor Samsung on Tuesday reported its operating profit increased 19-fold last quarter. Tech giants’ desperation to secure memory pushed Micron’s profit margins to nearly 85% in the most recent quarter from 38% last year.

The memory crunch has made SK Hynix among the world’s best-performing stocks this year. Its shares are up well above 200% in 2026, as have Micron’s (MU), while Samsung has more than doubled. (Samsung’s shares are also listed in South Korea.)

For more on what SK Hynix’s listing means for the AI trade, read the full story here.

Stock Futures Mostly Lower Ahead of Friday’s Open

FROM 8 hr 14 min ago

Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up about 0.1% in premarket trading on Friday.

S&P 500 futures gave up earlier gains to point 0.1% lower.

Nasdaq 100 futures were off 0.5% before the open.