NEW YORK — Nvidia’s Jensen Huang walked onto a Taipei stage Monday and, within hours, rewrote the competitive map of the personal computer industry — sending Arm Holdings to a 14.5% gain and Qualcomm into a 9.5% freefall before lunch in New York.
What Is Driving the Tape
Three forces are pulling the market in competing directions this Monday. The dominant one is AI hardware excitement, triggered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchip announcement at Computex in Taiwan. The second is a macro tailwind from a stronger-than-expected ISM Manufacturing PMI print of 54.0, the best reading since May 2022. The third — and the one that deserves more respect from bulls — is a crude oil spike to $90.55 per barrel after Iran suspended ceasefire negotiations with the United States, citing Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Gaza.
The result is a split tape. The S&P 500 trades at 7,585.26, up a modest 0.17%. The Nasdaq Composite leads at 27,034.50, up 0.37%, carried by mega-cap tech. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sits at 50,912.06, down 0.24%, weighed by rate-sensitive industrials and consumer discretionary names. The Russell 2000 is the clearest casualty of the session, down 0.89% — small caps don’t benefit from AI chip euphoria, and they bear the full brunt of higher energy costs and rate uncertainty.
That divergence between large-cap tech and small-cap everything-else is a pattern worth tracking. As we noted heading into June, the geopolitical risk embedded in Iran’s posture was a live threat to the rally’s breadth, and today’s Russell underperformance suggests that threat is materializing at the index level even as headline numbers look calm.
The Chip War Jensen Huang Just Declared
The RTX Spark superchip is not a marginal product refresh. It pairs up to a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU with up to 20 Arm cores and up to 128GB of unified memory, targeting AI workflows, creative professionals, and gamers from a single platform. The fall 2026 launch will span laptops and compact desktops from Microsoft, Dell, HP, ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI — essentially the entire Windows ecosystem enlisted in one announcement.
The immediate beneficiary beyond Nvidia itself is Arm Holdings, whose architecture underpins the CPU half of the Spark design. Arm surged 14.5%, reflecting what the market interprets as a structural acceleration of Arm’s displacement of x86 in the PC segment. That displacement has been a multi-year thesis — today it got a very loud datapoint.
Dell Technologies and HP each climbed more than 8%, and Dell received a separate catalyst: Morgan Stanley upgraded Dell and more than doubled its price target, following a first-quarter earnings report that saw revenue surge 87.5% year over year to $43.8 billion, beating estimates by $8.46 billion. EPS of $4.86 exceeded Wall Street by $1.96. Those are not incremental beats — they reflect a company absorbing AI infrastructure demand faster than analysts modeled. Our earlier analysis asked whether Dell’s valuation had gotten ahead of the story; today’s Morgan Stanley move suggests the Street is still catching up.
The losers are equally instructive. Qualcomm fell 9.5% and Intel shed 6.5%. Both companies had built competing visions for the AI-capable Windows PC — Qualcomm with its Snapdragon X Elite platform, Intel with its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake lines. Nvidia’s entry doesn’t just add a competitor; it reframes the value proposition entirely. A chip with a Blackwell GPU built in changes what consumers and enterprise buyers expect from a PC. Neither Qualcomm nor Intel has a credible answer to that GPU pairing today.
IBM added a separate note of enterprise AI optimism, climbing 9.77% to $326.90 as investors continued to price in the company’s positioning across AI consulting, hybrid cloud, and enterprise services. IBM’s move is less about Computex and more about a broader re-rating of companies with genuine enterprise AI deployment at scale.
Manufacturing Acceleration Meets an Oil Problem
The ISM Manufacturing PMI beating at 54.0 — versus the 53.0 consensus and April’s 52.7 — would normally be an unambiguous positive. The underlying detail is even more encouraging: New Orders rose to 56.8 from 54.1, Production climbed to 54.3, and the Backlog of Orders index ticked up to 52.2. The Employment Index, though still in contraction at 48.6, improved sharply from April’s 46.4, suggesting the labor drag in manufacturing is at least narrowing.
This was the thesis our earlier coverage examined — whether manufacturing contraction would be June’s speed bump. The answer, for now, is no. Expansion is real, broad-based, and accelerating.
The complication sits in one line of the ISM release: Prices Paid at 82.1. That number edged down from April’s 84.6, but any reading above 80 signals intense input cost pressure. Now add WTI crude at $90.55, up 3.7% on the day after Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported the suspension of US ceasefire talks. Brent sits at $94. Energy costs feed directly into manufacturing input costs, freight, and consumer prices. The Federal Reserve does not cut rates into a 54-handle ISM print with oil at $90 and Prices Paid at 82. Traders betting on a June or July cut should factor that arithmetic carefully.
Home Depot’s 2.14% decline to $303.84 adds another layer — new housing starts for May came in below expectations, signaling that the consumer-facing end of the construction cycle is softening even as industrial manufacturing accelerates. That divergence is consistent with an economy where corporate and government AI-driven capital expenditure is strong, but rate-sensitive household activity is not.
Movers That Don’t Fit the Narrative
MGM Resorts surged 15.8%, making it the session’s top S&P 500 performer. People Incorporated submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire all remaining MGM shares it doesn’t already own at $48.30 per share in cash — a 24.1% premium to MGM’s 30-day volume-weighted average price and a 10.6% premium to Friday’s close. People Incorporated already owns 26.1% of MGM’s outstanding stock. The bid structure is a classic partial-owner buyout, and the 15.8% move suggests the market is pricing a deal close — though non-binding proposals carry real execution risk and board negotiations can extend for months.
On the other end, FedEx fell 18.5%, making it the worst S&P 500 performer of the session by a considerable margin. The scale of that decline warrants attention beyond the specific catalyst — an 18% move in a Dow-adjacent logistics name on a day when manufacturing data is strengthening suggests company-specific issues rather than macro ones. FedEx’s drop reflects guidance concerns that cut against the otherwise constructive ISM picture.
3M rose 3.70% to $148.62 following reports of a favorable settlement on legacy liabilities — a reminder that idiosyncratic resolution of overhanging legal risk can unlock value independent of sector trends. Veeva Systems gained 8.9%, extending healthcare technology’s outperformance on the day.
What to Watch Into the Close
The afternoon setup is not as clean as the morning’s AI enthusiasm suggested. Oil at $90 is a headwind that compounds with every hour it holds. The Russell 2000’s 0.89% decline into the session’s second half is a breadth warning — sustained small-cap underperformance often precedes broader index softening within days, not weeks. The question is whether Nvidia’s momentum can carry the Nasdaq through the close without broader participation.
Watch whether the S&P 500 can defend 7,570 — the intraday level where the morning’s advance stalled initially. A close above 7,585 on expanding volume would confirm the bull case. A late-day fade toward 7,550 on the back of oil headlines would suggest the geopolitical risk is gaining traction. As we assessed this morning, June’s first week was always the key test for this rally’s durability. One day in, the answer is inconclusive.
| Level / Event | Value | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 support | 7,570 | Hold needed for bullish close; break opens path to 7,540 |
| WTI Crude resistance | $90.55 | Sustained hold above $90 pressures Fed cut timeline and Prices Paid outlook |
| Arm Holdings (ARM) | +14.5% | Watch for close confirmation; fade into close would signal profit-taking over re-rating |
| Russell 2000 breadth | -0.89% | Small-cap lag vs Nasdaq divergence; widening gap signals narrowing rally leadership |
| MGM Resorts deal vote | $48.30 bid | Non-binding; board response will set next move — fade risk if rejection or counter delayed |
The afternoon session sets up as a referendum on whether today’s AI enthusiasm is broad enough to overcome oil’s drag and small-cap weakness. Tech carries the index; the index does not carry tech. That asymmetry works until it doesn’t. Traders positioned long into the close should define their levels now — the data today gives the bulls their best argument, but $90 crude and a fractured ceasefire give the bears theirs. The close will be the first honest verdict.
This article is published by PreMarket Daily for informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial advice, investment recommendations, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Always consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.
Other Articles
Is Iran Killing the June Rally Before It Starts?
