US Stock Market Close | June Nonfarm Payrolls Unexpectedly Miss Expectations! Dow Jones Rises Nearly 600 Points to a Record High, Nasdaq Falls 0.8% as Storage Chips Continue to Plunge

Glonghui, July 3 | In June, U.S. nonfarm payrolls unexpectedly fell short of expectations, with hiring activity slowing significantly and expectations for Federal Reserve rate hikes cooling. The Dow Jones opened higher and moved upward, at one point surging nearly 600 points to a record 52,903.85, ultimately closing up 1.14%. Shares of memory chip companies extended their decline; the Nasdaq opened higher but closed down 0.8%, while the S&P 500 ended the day nearly flat. This week, the Dow rose a total of 1.97%, the Nasdaq gained 2.12%, and the S&P 500 rose 1.76%. News that Meta intends to enter the cloud business and sell excess computing power weighed heavily on the storage and semiconductor sectors, sending the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down 5.44%. SanDisk plunged over 14%, KLA dropped more than 11%, Western Digital fell over 9%, Arm declined more than 6%, Micron Technology and Intel both fell over 5%, AMD and ASML dropped over 4%, and NVIDIA slipped 1.39%. Major tech stocks were mixed: Apple rose nearly 5%, SpaceX gained over 2%, Meta fell more than 4%, and Tesla tumbled over 7%, marking its largest single-day decline in nearly a year. Precious metals, weight loss drugs, and cryptocurrency concept stocks rose. Newmont Corporation climbed over 5%, Pan American Silver gained over 4%, a certain exchange surged nearly 4%, while Amgen and Novo Nordisk both advanced over 3%. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index fell 1.77%, with most popular Chinese stocks declining. 21Vianet dropped over 10%, iQIYI fell more than 4%, NIO, XPeng, and Baidu fell over 3%, NetEase, Alibaba, Bilibili, and Li Auto lost over 1%, while JD.com gained more than 1%. U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by 57,000 in June, far below the expected 115,000; additionally, the April–May nonfarm payrolls were revised downwards by a combined 74,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.2%, while it was previously expected to remain at 4.3%. Following the data release, the market expects the Federal Reserve to postpone rate hikes, with December now being anticipated for a hike instead of the previously expected October. Today (July 3), the U.S. stock market will be closed for the day. As U.S. Independence Day (July 4) in 2026 falls on a Saturday, U.S. financial markets will observe the holiday with a makeup day off on Friday, as per regulations. Due to this holiday, certain futures contracts on CME and ICE will also end trading early.