Micron Crosses $1,000
Micron has nearly quadrupled in six months on the AI memory shortage, closing above 1,000 for the first time.
A US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz crashed oil and lit a broad melt-up. Micron crossed 1,000 for the first time, the chip group surged, and SpaceX jumped another 19.6%, as the war premium that drove inflation all spring drained out two days before Warsh's first Fed meeting.
Micron has nearly quadrupled in six months on the AI memory shortage, closing above 1,000 for the first time.
Stocks melted up, the S&P 500 1.8% to a record 754.83 and the Nasdaq 100 3.1%, after the White House confirmed a framework with Iran at the G7 to lift the naval blockade and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with sixty days of talks to follow. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves through that strait.
Removing the war premium did the work. WTI crude crashed 4.9% to 80.75, its lowest since early March, and the VIX fell 8% to 16.2. Cheaper oil is the cleanest path to cooler inflation, and the market treated it as a green light.
The standout was Micron, up 10.8% to 1,087.99, through 1,000 on a wall of target hikes into its June 24 earnings. UBS sits at 1,625, Raymond James near 1,100, and even a cautious Goldman lifted its number to 900, all citing memory that is sold out for 2026 and a DRAM market that keeps tightening.
This is the supplier side of the AI trade winning outright. Marvell rose 10.4% ahead of its June 22 entry into the S&P 500, and Oracle, the debt-funded spender the market crushed last week, recovered 4.6% as the names it pays ripped. The buildout's cost is still the suppliers' revenue.
The melt-up was broad and high-beta led, from the chips to crypto proxies to the new listing.
This was not a narrow squeeze. SpaceX jumped another 19.6% to 192.50, extending Friday's record debut toward a 2.4 trillion valuation, and the high-beta complex confirmed the risk-on, Coinbase 6.2%, MicroStrategy 5.8%, Palantir 5.3%.
The megacaps came along, Meta 4.7%, Amazon 3.1%, Alphabet 2.7%, Microsoft 2.3%. When the most-shorted names and the steadiest names rise together on the same catalyst, it is a regime relief, not a rotation.
Crude has rolled from its wartime highs near 110 to 80 as the deal to reopen the strait took shape.
Industrial production for May rose just 0.1% against a 0.3% forecast, with manufacturing output flat and capacity use at 76.2%. After April's 0.9% jump, the factory engine cooled.
For a melt-up that is exactly the right kind of weak. Soft output plus a collapsing oil-and-inflation impulse is the cocktail that lets equities run into a central-bank meeting, because it argues against the Fed needing to lean harder.
The rally was positioned into the June 16-17 FOMC, Kevin Warsh's first as chair, with a hold at 3.50 to 3.75% priced near certain. The event is not the rate, it is the dot plot and the language, and how a new chair frames the path.
Falling oil cut the inflation tail at exactly the moment the meeting opened, which is why the most rate-sensitive growth names led. The risk is that cheaper oil tomorrow does not undo a 4.2% inflation print today, and the dots could say so.