Weekly Market Commentary: Stocks Rise as Tech Volatility Continues
07/06/26
Sunflower Bank Weekly Market Commentary: July 6, 2026
Each week, our Wealth Management team analyzes the U.S. stock market and bond market activity and news of the previous week, summarizing their findings into a weekly market update report. The key points of this week's commentary, "Stocks Rise As Tech Volatility Continues," include:
- Large cap equities rose in the holiday-shortened week as volatility in the tech sector continued. The S&P 500 increased +1.8% and the Nasdaq 100 rose +0.7%. International equity indexes also showed positive results. The MSCI EAFE Index jumped +2.8% and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index increased +1.0%.
- Technology stocks continued to experience significant volatility. The State Street Technology Sector ETF saw swings of more than +/-2% every day last week. Stocks with direct AI exposure were particularly volatile. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was +/-4% each day last week and has had a +/-5% move in each of the past seven trading weeks.
- One potential contributor to the extreme volatility is the rise in popularity of leveraged ETFs composed of single stocks and narrow subsectors. An ETF listed on the Hong Kong Stock exchange that seeks to replicate two-times the daily return of SK Hynix became the largest levered single-stock ETF in the world earlier this year despite launching less than twelve months ago. Assets under management in this fund currently sit at approximately $10 billion, up from about $500 million at the start of this year. For comparison, SPUU, the 2x leveraged S&P 500 ETF, has $250 million in fund assets.
- Regarding last week’s economic data, the most notable data release last week was a mixed June jobs report. According to the initial estimate, the US economy added 57,000 jobs in June, well below expectations for 115,000. Prior month job gains were revised lower. The unemployment rate decreased slightly to 4.2%.
- 2Q26 corporate earnings season begins this week. According to Factset, analysts expect combined EPS for the companies in the S&P 500 to increase +23% year-over-year. This rate of growth would be the second consecutive increase of more than +20% and the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.