Wild Markets Week Settles Down -- WSJ

By Krystal Hur

Billions of dollars of losses in artificial-intelligence stocks. Sharp spikes in oil prices that dropped just as quickly. A jump in benchmark Treasury yields Thursday to their highest level this year.

A topsy-turvy week in markets ended on a tepid note on Friday. The S&P 500 gained less than 0.1% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5%, or 236 points. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.6%.

Things looked uglier when looking at the full week. Over the past five sessions, the Nasdaq composite fell 2.1%, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively. The S&P and Nasdaq suffered their first back-to-back weekly losses since March.

Early calm gave way to stomach-churning moves late in the week that saw oil prices roaring above $100 a barrel and an $890 billion wipeout in the market value of the Magnificent Seven tech behemoths. Shares of Tesla fell 18% this week, their worst week since December 2022. Amazon.com, Alphabet and Meta Platforms all slumped more than 6%.

"This sort of malaise that we've seen is going to need to be shaken by some positive catalyst," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney. "Investors are perhaps a little bit exhausted with that AI narrative story."

Shares of SpaceX fell 7.2% this week, down more than 40% from their highs achieved days after the rocket maker went public in June and off more than $1 trillion in value from the company's market-cap peak.

Not all corners of the stock market declined. The S&P 500's industrials and materials sectors rose more than 1%, as did real estate, which closed at its highest level since April 2022. Energy stocks rose 3.8% to close at their highest level since May.

Chip makers were spared from this week's carnage. Shares of Micron Technology jumped 8.5%, Advanced Micro Devices rose 5.3%, Broadcom gained 3% and Nvidia added 2%.

Treasury yields rose for the week, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note settling Friday at 4.678%. On Thursday, the yield on the 10-year settled above 4.7%, hitting its highest level since January 2025. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, rose nearly 10% this week to $96.78 a barrel.

Signs of economic strength helped lift investors' spirits Friday. U.S. business activity in the private sector continued to expand to an eight-month high in July, according to a monthly survey. And sales of new single-family homes rose to 628,000 in June, up from 618,000 in May and above the 606,000 sales expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

Strong earnings have also been a source of comfort for market participants. More than 130 companies in the S&P 500 have reported a 69% jump in second-quarter earnings so far, according to FactSet. The earnings growth rate is expected to be 37% by the time all the companies report results.

Elsewhere, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit Friday in the Court of International Trade arguing Trump's newly announced 10%-to-12.5% tariffs, targeting the U.S.'s major trading partners, are an unlawful attempt to restore the president's global tariff policy.

Write to Krystal Hur at krystal.hur@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 24, 2026 17:22 ET (21:22 GMT)