The rally finally breaks:
an OpenAI IPO-delay headline cracked the AI trade, SpaceX crashed, and Bitcoin lost $60k
This is the week the rally rolled over. A New York Times report that OpenAI is weighing a delay of its IPO to 2027 - unnerved by SpaceX's rocky debut and the volatility in AI shares - punctured the euphoria that had carried the market. The Nasdaq fell about 4.6 percent, its worst week in over a year, and logged a fifth straight losing session Friday; the S&P 500 slid roughly 2 percent to close at 7,354.02. SpaceX crashed to an all-time low, chips and SoftBank got hit, Bitcoin broke below $60,000, and only defensives - the Dow, up about 0.6 percent - held up.
Week of June 22-26, 2026. Data from market closes, the New York Times and Forbes reporting on OpenAI, and US spot-ETF flow data.
S&P 500 close on Friday, down about 2.05% on the week - the two-week high from last week is gone as the AI trade unwound
The Nasdaq's worst week in over a year, with a fifth straight losing session Friday, after an OpenAI IPO-delay report cracked AI euphoria
Bitcoin broke below $60,000 for the first time since late 2024 - its lowest since October 2024 - as $696M fled US spot-BTC ETFs in a day
The pin: a report that OpenAI may delay its IPO cracked the AI trade
All last week the market shrugged off a hawkish Fed. This week it stopped shrugging. The catalyst was not the Fed at all - it was a single New York Times report, surfaced June 25, that OpenAI is considering delaying its blockbuster IPO to 2027. The reason cited: SpaceX's rocky post-debut performance and the volatility washing through AI shares. A company synonymous with the AI boom signaling that it would rather wait for calmer markets was all the tape needed to reprice the whole trade.
The reaction across the AI complex was immediate. Chip and AI-adjacent names sold off hard - Intel fell about 3 percent, SanDisk 5 percent, Arm 4 percent, and Marvell 3.7 percent. The damage was worst overseas: SoftBank, the clearest proxy for AI enthusiasm, plunged as much as 14 percent intraday and closed down 12.53 percent, erasing roughly 5.6 trillion yen of value in a single day. The euphoria that had carried the Nasdaq to records did not just cool; it reversed.
Last week we wrote that a hawkish Fed could not stop a rally driven by something stronger than rates. This week we learned what could stop it: a crack in the AI story itself. When the poster child for the boom hints it would rather wait until 2027, no energy tailwind is big enough to paper over it.
The rally broke: the S&P slid and the Nasdaq had its worst week in over a year
Add it up across the week and the reversal is stark. The Nasdaq Composite fell roughly 4.6 percent - its worst week in more than a year - and logged a fifth consecutive losing session on Friday. The broad market followed: the S&P 500 dropped about 2.05 percent on the week and closed Friday at 7,354.02, off a fraction on the day and well below the 7,500.58 two-week high it printed just last week.
The one place to hide was defense. The Dow Jones Industrial Average actually rose about 0.6 percent on the week as capital rotated out of high-beta tech and into old-economy names - on Thursday the gains were led by industrials, up 2.19 percent, healthcare, up 1.49 percent, and materials, up 1.39 percent. That is the signature of a rotation, not a panic: money did not leave the market so much as move to the far end of it. A week ago the story was that stocks shrugged off a hawkish Fed; this week the same market decided the AI trade had run too far, too fast.
A 2 percent week for the S&P and a 4.6 percent week for the Nasdaq is the exact mirror image of last week, when a flip-to-hikes dot plot could not keep the market down for a full session. What changed was not the Fed - it held at 3.50 to 3.75 percent - but the AI narrative that was doing the heavy lifting.
No fresh fuel: oil stayed soft, but there was nothing new to power stocks
Last week's engine was cheaper energy. This week there was simply no new tailwind. Oil stayed soft - Brent traded near $79.25 and West Texas Intermediate around $78.94 early in the week - as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz kept accelerating after the Iran peace, leaving Brent on track for a decline of roughly 20 percent on the month and about 23 percent on the quarter. Cheap oil is still doing disinflation's work in the background.
But a falling oil price you already knew about is not a catalyst. The disinflation impulse that let stocks ignore a hawkish Fed a week ago was already priced in; with no fresh leg lower to celebrate and the AI story suddenly in doubt, there was nothing to offset the tech unwind. The lesson of the two weeks back to back is a clean one: last week energy was strong enough to overpower the Fed, and this week it was not enough to overpower a crack in the AI trade.
Oil near the high-$70s is a quiet, ongoing positive - but the market had already banked it. When the one thing holding the rally together was the AI narrative, and that narrative broke, a stable oil price could soften the fall but not stop it.
SpaceX crashed: SPCX round-tripped its record debut
Nothing captured the reversal like SpaceX. After spiking to a $225.64 all-time high on June 16, SPCX came apart. It fell 16 percent on Monday, June 22 alone, and by Tuesday it printed an all-time low of $147.11 - a drop of roughly 24 percent over just six trading sessions from the peak, to somewhere around $151 to $153. Along the way it sliced through its own $161 debut close and briefly erased about $600 billion of market value.
This is exactly the price discovery we flagged when the euphoria peaked last week - a thin float getting honest with itself once the one-way chase ends - only faster and sharper than almost anyone expected. And it fed back on itself: SpaceX's rocky post-debut tape is the very thing the OpenAI report cited as a reason to wait. The biggest IPO in history had become a live warning about how violently a hot new listing can reprice, and that warning rippled straight through the rest of the AI complex.
A round trip from a $225.64 high to a $147.11 low in a handful of sessions is what a tiny float does when sentiment turns. SPCX did not just fall - it became the cautionary tale that helped knock over the whole AI trade.
Bitcoin lost $60,000
The asset we have been watching finally gave way. Bitcoin broke below $60,000 for the first time since late 2024, sliding to roughly $58,888 - its lowest level since October 2024. The break did not come in isolation: US spot-Bitcoin ETFs saw $696.3 million of outflows on June 26, the largest single day of June, capping a month of roughly $6.35 billion in redemptions.
For weeks we tracked $60,000 as the line in the sand - through May's $80k "reclaim", June's bleed toward $60k, and last week's slide right up to it. This week the line broke. With a hawkish Fed still in the backdrop, capital fleeing the ETFs, and the AI trade that had drained attention from crypto now cracking too, there was no bid left to defend the round number. For the full anatomy of the break, see our note on Bitcoin sinking below $60,000.
Last week BTC was the one risk asset left out of the rally; this week it lost $60k as the same forces - a hawkish Fed and relentless ETF outflows - finally overwhelmed it. The decoupling everyone debated is now complete.
What this means for your portfolio
The rally broke, and it was the mirror image of last week. The S&P fell about 2 percent to 7,354.02 and the Nasdaq lost roughly 4.6 percent - its worst week in over a year, with a fifth straight down day. A week ago stocks shrugged off a hawkish Fed; this week they could not shrug off a crack in the AI trade.
Rotation, not capitulation. The only shelter was defense - the Dow rose about 0.6 percent as money moved out of high-beta tech and into industrials, healthcare and materials. Where you were positioned mattered far more than whether you were invested at all.
The pin was a single headline. A report that OpenAI may delay its IPO to 2027, spooked by SpaceX's rocky debut, punctured AI euphoria: chips fell (Intel, Arm, Marvell) and SoftBank lost 12.53 percent in a day, while SpaceX (SPCX) crashed to an all-time low of $147.11, down about 24 percent from its $225.64 peak and back below its $161 debut close.
Bitcoin lost $60k. BTC broke below $60,000 for the first time since late 2024, to about $58,888 - its lowest since October 2024 - as $696 million fled US spot-BTC ETFs in a single day. The line in the sand we tracked for a month is gone.
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