Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Tech led the broader market lower today as the Nasdaq Composite dropped more than one percent, falling to twenty-six thousand three hundred seventy-six, while the S&P five hundred shed more than half a percent. Nvidia, Broadcom, and Micron were the primary drags, with chip weakness rippling across the growth trade even as the Dow managed a fresh record close above fifty-two thousand.
Feeding into that risk-off tone, crude oil extended its slide for a fourth straight session, with July WTI settling down nearly six percent to a three-and-a-half-month low. Normalizing global supply is doing the heavy lifting here, and that kind of deflationary pressure in energy tends to pull inflation expectations lower and complicate the Federal Reserve's read on the economy.
The dollar, meanwhile, is holding roughly flat, caught between two competing forces — that crude-driven softness in inflation expectations on one side, and weaker-than-expected May housing starts and building permits on the other. Neither camp has enough conviction today to move the needle meaningfully on the dollar index.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
