On Thursday, June 11, U.S. Eastern time, Wall Street delivered a textbook V-shaped reversal. Capital that had fled one day earlier on inflation and war concerns turned back into risk assets within 24 hours. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 929.97 points, or 1.86%, to 50,848.75, reclaiming the 50,000 mark. The Nasdaq rose 2.54% to 25,809.66, while the S&P 500 gained 1.75% to 7,394.30. The Russell 2000 climbed 3.02%, leading all major indexes, and the VIX dropped nearly 12%, falling back below 20.
A Hot PPI Report Met a Cold Market Reaction
The striking part of the rally was that it came on the same day as the hottest inflation report of the year. The May Producer Price Index rose 6.5% year over year, the highest level since November 2022. On a monthly basis, PPI increased 1.1%, well above the expected 0.7%. The breakdown was even more intense: goods prices rose 2.8% month over month, the largest monthly gain since the data series began in 2009. Roughly 80% of that rise came from energy, while wholesale gasoline prices surged 23.4% in a single month. Further upstream, first-stage intermediate demand prices rose 3.2% month over month, also a record.
On an ordinary trading day, a report like this would have been enough to pressure the Nasdaq sharply. But the market was focused on one question: whether the war was about to end. In the afternoon, Trump announced that he had canceled the strike on Iran that had been scheduled for that night. He also said Iran’s top leadership had approved a draft multilateral consensus agreement, and that Israel and other allies had agreed “in principle.” After the news, WTI crude dropped more than 4% intraday to around $86, while Brent fell below $89. Trump’s own response to the inflation data was blunt: “I like it, I like this inflation.” He added that once the war ends, oil prices would fall “like a rock.”
That gave traders a complete chain of reasoning: a draft agreement, falling oil prices, a peak-inflation trade, and a broad move to buy risk assets. The technology, industrials and materials sectors, which had been among the hardest hit the previous day, led the rebound. Defensive areas that had reached record highs on Wednesday, including consumer staples, real estate and energy, were sold. Across two sessions, the same pool of capital completed a rapid switch between bearish and bullish positioning.
AI Hardware Repaired the Damage While Software Sold Off
The strongest part of the rebound was concentrated in AI hardware. Micron jumped nearly 12%, erasing all of its losses for the week in a single session. SanDisk rose 14%. Intel gained about 10% after Bank of America upgraded the stock, citing a surge in CPU orders. AMD advanced 8%. From the June 5 collapse in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, it took only four trading days for sentiment in the chip complex to recover.
Software stocks traded in a different world. Oracle fell 9.56% and closed near $184. Its earnings beat did not matter to the market, which focused instead on cloud revenue missing expectations, negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion, and a new $40 billion financing plan. After the close, Adobe delivered a standard combination of stronger-than-expected results and higher guidance: second-quarter revenue of $6.62 billion, up 13%; full-year EPS guidance raised to $24.35 to $24.45; and AI-related recurring revenue tripling year over year. The stock’s response was another drop of more than 5% in after-hours trading.
The trigger for Adobe was management turnover. CFO Dan Durn announced that he would leave next Monday to join Marvell. This followed the March announcement that CEO Narayen would hand over the role, making Durn the second core executive to leave Adobe within three months. The stock is already down 38% for the year. In market pricing, a company whose AI revenue has tripled is being treated as a casualty of the AI trade. The destination of the departing CFO also matched the direction of the stock market rotation: Marvell is a chip company.
The same AI narrative is therefore being divided into two very different trades. Hardware is being bought because compute spending is visible. Software is being sold because the market is less convinced about the moat. The direction chosen by executives voting with their feet is aligned with the direction of equity prices in this session.
SpaceX Opens the Largest IPO on Record
Another reason for late-session buying on Thursday was hidden in Friday’s calendar. SpaceX priced its shares at $135 each and is set to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The size of the transaction is unprecedented. The base offering is expected to raise about $75 billion, nearly three times the previous record held by Saudi Aramco at $25.6 billion. The offering valuation is about $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX the seventh-largest company in the United States by market value at listing, ahead of its corporate sibling Tesla, valued at about $1.6 trillion.
Reported subscription demand exceeded $250 billion, about 3.5 to 4 times the fundraising target. About 30% of the allocation was assigned to retail investors, three times the usual industry practice. Elon Musk will still hold more than 82% of the voting power after the offering. The follow-on index impact is also important for traders: under the rules, SpaceX will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index 15 days after listing. At that point, global index funds tracking QQQ will have to buy mechanically, with estimated demand between $22 billion and $27 billion.
The risks are also clearly visible. Senator Warren sent a letter to the SEC requesting that the offering be delayed. The concerns include valuation being detached from financial fundamentals, with annual revenue of about $20 billion implying roughly 88 times price-to-sales, as well as the dual-class share structure. Morningstar described the deal as “significantly overvalued.” There is also a more immediate market issue: the $75 billion fundraising will draw liquidity from the secondary market within a week. The sharp volatility in storage and CPU stocks this week was partly the result of funds shifting positions to prepare for the new issue.
Oil, Inflation and the Unfinished Agreement
The quality of the rebound still has a question mark. Wednesday’s 953-point Dow plunge and Thursday’s 930-point surge were driven by the same person’s social media account. The draft agreement has not been signed. Confirmation from the Iranian side still comes from unofficial channels. Historically, this conflict has seen several reversals after appearing to be “close to a deal.” If one post can pull indexes back from the edge, another post can push them down again.
The inflation line has not been cleared either. The record rise in intermediate-demand PPI represents price pressure already moving through the pipeline. Even if oil prices peak immediately, the transmission into CPI can still last over the next two to three months. Pricing for a 25-basis-point rate hike in December did not move after the data was released. The European Central Bank had already raised rates to 2.25% on Thursday, and next week the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England will all be on stage.
The bullish side has evidence as well. Core PPI rose 0.4% month over month, below expectations. Inflation momentum excluding energy is indeed slowing. Intel’s CPU orders and Micron’s demand are real orders, not merely sentiment. If the peace agreement is finalized, an oil price around $86 would create a very different inflation path from the panic pricing seen earlier in the week. Bulls do not need a perfect script; they need oil to stop making new highs.
That is why the opening price of SPCX tonight becomes the most direct measure of risk appetite in this market. A $75 billion new issue, an 88 times price-to-sales valuation, and four times oversubscription will bring greed and skepticism into the same candlestick. The session will show whether the rebound is strong enough to absorb the largest IPO on record while inflation and geopolitical headlines remain active.