Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we use data to review the market and trends to capture opportunities, covering macroeconomics, US equities, precious metals, crude oil, and crypto assets, to gain insight into key global market shifts. Brought to you by PANews.

Macroeconomy

Global markets have entered a clear phase of risk contraction under the impact of repricing across AI and semiconductor supply chains. Optimistic expectations previously built around AI infrastructure expansion have met marginal corrections, with volatility in South Korea's memory chip supply chain acting as the trigger, compounded by a hawkish tilt in Fed policy expectations and persistent ETF outflows, collectively weighing on risk asset performance.

As the United States and Iran reached a temporary peace agreement, tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fully resumed, and crude oil prices continue to retreat. WTI crude dropped below the $73 mark, and Brent crude slipped to around $76, close to erasing all gains since the US-Iran conflict escalation on February 28.

In precious metals, gold and silver weakened in tandem. Spot gold fell nearly 2% intraday at one point, dropping to around $4,050, while silver plunged over 5% in a single day, breaking below $62 to hit a new low for the year. NYMEX copper and LME tin also tumbled 3% and 5%, respectively. Wall Street banks collectively lowered their gold price forecasts. Goldman Sachs has slashed its year-end gold target drastically to $4,900, stating outright that gold has weakened its energy-linkage and re-tethered to real interest rates, and rising holding costs are forcing extreme capital outflow pressure on gold ETFs. Deutsche Bank sees a floor of $3,800 in an extreme scenario.

Banks diverge sharply on Fed rate hike path forecasts:

BofA analyst Aditya Bhave: US economic inflation is worsening, expects the Fed to hike 75bp consecutively in September, October, and December, targeting a range of 4.25%–4.5%.
Deutsche Bank: expects 50bp of hikes this year and does not rule out acting early in July, as Warsh demonstrates strong resolve to fight inflation.
Goldman Sachs: sees a 50% probability of a Fed hike in July.
Citi: pushes back rate cut expectations by one month, forecasting cuts in October 2026, December 2026, and January 2027.
UBS: believes the market overestimates hike risks, expects rates on hold through all of 2026, with easing resuming in early 2027.

Key upcoming events to watch:

June 25, 20:30: US Q1 final annualized GDP QoQ (expected 1.6%). If AI-driven equipment spending jumps beyond expectations, it would further reinforce economic overheating and rate hike bets.
June 25, 20:30: US May PCE and core PCE price index release (core MoM expected 0.5%, YoY expected to rise to 4.1%). As the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, this will directly set the tone for whether a July hike is imminent based on the most critical inflation test.

US Equities

Wall Street suffered a panicked sell-off on Black Tuesday, with the Nasdaq Composite plunging 2.21%, the S&P 500 falling 1.44%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged down just 0.09%, cushioned by defensive flows into consumer and healthcare sectors.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plummeted 7.87%, with all 30 constituents closing in the red. Micron, up over 300% year-to-date, tumbled 13%. Tesla fell 5.8%, while SanDisk, onsemi, Arm, and Applied Materials all posted declines between 8% and 14%.

Tesla snapped a three-day losing streak, ultimately closing up 0.98%, after its market cap briefly fell below $2 trillion intraday. The stock currently trades around $156, retreating over 27% from its high of $211.39, wiping out $600 billion in market value. The company just completed a $25 billion senior unsecured bond offering (over $85 billion in subscriptions), earmarked for a hundred-billion-dollar-scale AI expansion.

Recently listed AI chip maker Cerebras released its first earnings report. Although Q1 revenue surged 92% YoY to $193.4 million, constrained by guidance that core gross margins will fall to 36%–38% next quarter, its after-hours share price slid a further 11% from $201.

Qualcomm dropped 8%. Reports that it is acquiring AI software firm Modular at a $4 billion valuation were met with cold water from Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, who assigned a “Market Perform” rating and a $221.90 price target, warning its data center ambitions face 37% downside risk.

Nvidia fell 4.15%, with its market cap dropping below $5 trillion. The market awaits its shareholder meeting for dual validation on executive compensation and AI hardware momentum.

Goldman Sachs strategist Chris Hussey characterized the sell-off as a "froth-removal" from a blistering rally rather than a fundamental re-rating, noting the 12 tech stocks that plunged over 8% still hold double-digit to doubling gains for the year, and there’s no narrative shift toward abandoning AI.
BTIG analysts called it a "chip massacre" and warn of another 10–15% downside, with medium-term downside risks unresolved.
Evercore ISI and Citi, however, maintain conviction that mega-cap tech will regain favor, urging decisive capital deployment on pullbacks, believing tech giants will return to favor after the plunge, and that earnings will prove their strength.

Key upcoming events to watch:

June 24 (EDT): Qualcomm New York Investor Day. Whether management can quantify the per-unit AI phone value accretion and the $10-billion TAM for data centers by FY2027 will determine whether it can shake off recent valuation discounts.
June 25: Micron Technology reports Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings. FactSet’s John Butters notes S&P earnings growth would plummet without Micron and Nvidia; J.Gold’s Jack Gold expects sustained high memory pricing; Wedbush, Stifel’s Brian Chin, and Deutsche Bank have raised price targets to $1,300–$1,500; FactSet consensus EPS will surge nearly 1,000% to $20.57 — this is the ultimate test for AI hardware investment durability flagged by Pepperstone analyst Dilin Wu.
June 25: Nvidia holds its annual shareholder meeting. Management commentary on Blackwell chip progress, executive compensation proposals, and macro capex will directly sway whether long-term sentiment across the global semiconductor sector stabilizes.

Crypto

Bitcoin dipped amid macro liquidity contraction and equity market selling pressure, falling back below $62,000 yesterday. Current short-term support sits in the $60,000–$61,000 zone, with resistance between $63,500–$65,000. Market maker Wintermute noted that summer liquidity drought and stagnant ETF inflows are pushing prices toward the critical $59,000 observation level. Several analysts warned that if bulls cannot hold the weekly 200MA, a decisive breakdown could send BTC plunging to the $53,000–$58,000 range.

Ethereum followed the broader market lower, falling nearly 4% on the day to around $1,650. Even graver than the price action are internal ecosystem disputes. Faced with former contributor Trenton Van Epps' warning of $30 million in annual core development costs, Kleros co-founder Clément Lesaege proposed siphoning 0–10% from validator yields (roughly 50,000–70,000 ETH, worth up to $115 million) to subsidize the ecosystem — only to be blasted by Figment and Twinstake as a “monopolistic extraction” squeezing retail. Although the Ethereum Foundation decisively laid off 20% (54 people) and cut its budget by 40%, with five former researchers founding Ethlabs and securing capital from BitMine, Sharplink, and Joe Lubin, Bitwise analyst Max Shannon still warns that the 2.7% staking yield may detonate a severe liquidity exit crisis.

Today's Highlights:

Binance Alpha to list Nesa (NES) today
Binance will support Polygon (POL) network upgrade and hard fork on June 25
Newton Protocol (NEWT) to unlock approximately 139 million tokens on June 24, worth roughly $7.6 million
Plasma (XPL) to unlock approximately 88.89 million tokens on June 25, worth roughly $10.4 million
Humanity (H) to unlock approximately 266 million tokens on June 25, worth roughly $68.56 million
Upbit 24-hour trading volume leaders: APX, XRP, BTC, WLD, ETH
Bitcoin spot ETF: -$114 million, net outflows for 4 consecutive days
Ethereum spot ETF: -$82.351 million, net outflows for 4 consecutive days
HYPE spot ETF: +$1.4583 million

Today's top gainers among the top 100 by market cap: BEAT up 49.1%, AVAX up 3.8%, LIT up 2.7%, DASH up 2.5%, KITE up 2.3%.

Asia-Pacific Markets

The Nikkei 225 index was hit by a sell-off in US tech stocks and global panic in early trading, briefly plunging nearly 4%. However, with dip-buyers stepping in, the index slowly clawed back and ended down just 0.88%. The yen traded in an extremely dangerous range of 161–162 against the dollar, hovering near its lowest level since 1986. Although the Bank of Japan has raised its benchmark interest rate to a 30-year high of 1.0%, the glaring Japan-US interest rate differential amid intensifying rate hike expectations from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America has the market on high alert for a devastating forex intervention move by Japan's Ministry of Finance at any moment.

South Korea's KOSPI index suffered an epic flash crash yesterday (June 23), plummeting 9.99% in a single day and triggering circuit breakers multiple times. The plunge was driven by a confluence of factors, including forced liquidation of highly leveraged retail positions, institutional rebalancing, and policy fears.

On Wednesday (June 24), the KOSPI index closed up 3.26% after highly volatile trading. Samsung Electronics rallied 9.84%, having plunged as much as 12.31% the previous day. The company successfully boosted market confidence by raising its HBM4 shipment forecast and announcing a massive 90 trillion won share buyback program.

SK Hynix edged up 0.98%, after tumbling 12.47% the previous day, its biggest one-day drop since December 24, 2008. Although it was pressured by delays in HBM4 mass production and a cut in shipment forecasts, the company is stabilizing its fundamentals by shifting toward the high-margin general-purpose DRAM market and securing a large contract with Microsoft.

In China's A-share market, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.11%, the Shenzhen Component rose 1.24%, the ChiNext Index gained 1.41%, and the STAR 50 jumped over 2%. Semiconductor component newcomer Zhenbao Technology (688797) surged as high as 465 yuan on its debut, closing up 1,212%, with a single lot netting a maximum profit of over 210,000 yuan.

Key events to watch:

June 25: Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda attends an IMF central banking lecture event. His remarks on the inflation outlook and the path for reducing bond purchases/interest rates will directly determine whether the yen will instantly breach historical exchange rate defenses, triggering a global capital reallocation.
July 3: SK Hynix is expected to complete the review of its US depositary receipt (ADR) listing documents by South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service. If it successfully lists on a US exchange, it will significantly reshape the global pricing power of Asian memory giants and create a siphon effect on capital flows in the general-purpose DRAM and HBM markets.

South Korean stocks plunge 8%, SK Hynix falls 9%

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