Billion Markets Market

Magnificent Seven Wobbles, a Memory Chip Selloff, and a Private Credit Squeeze

S&P futures were trading at 7,552 with a modest 0.32 percent gain on Friday, heading into a holiday-shortened session. Asian stocks rallied overnight after Thursday's US payrolls report came in significantly below expectations — a weak jobs number functioning as good news for equities by reducing the probability of Federal Reserve rate increases. Seoul's Kospi was the standout gainer after a sharp selloff the previous session.

Goldman Sachs flagged a potential rotation away from the Magnificent Seven — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla — which have driven an outsized share of S&P 500 returns over three years. Institutional investors are reportedly reallocating toward sectors that underperformed during the AI euphoria period: healthcare, industrials, energy, and consumer staples. The rotation narrative has been predicted prematurely before, making it difficult to judge whether this iteration represents a genuine shift.

Apple's day was particularly contradictory. The stock rallied on reports of expanded iPhone production plans and chip talks with China, while simultaneously a separate story emerged about the company negotiating to purchase memory chips from two Chinese firms — CXMT and YMTC — that are on US government blacklists. Those talks triggered a semiconductor selloff across Asian markets, wiping out a reported 290 billion dollars in value from SK Hynix and Samsung. The timing was brutal for SK Hynix, which was preparing for its 29 billion dollar Nasdaq ADR debut within days of the selloff; the company has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the AI memory chip boom through its high-bandwidth memory chips used in Nvidia GPU systems.

Michael Burry, who called the 2008 housing crash, has added Micron to his AI-related short positions. His apparent thesis, inferred from 13-F filings, is that memory chip demand forecasts rest on AI capital expenditure projections that will not materialize at the expected scale or timeline. He has been building these positions for several quarters and has been early — which in short selling often means wrong until spectacularly right.

The private credit market is flashing a warning sign that is receiving less attention than it warrants. In Q2 2026, private credit fund investors requested redemptions totaling 15.6 billion dollars and received back less than six billion — a 62 percent shortfall. Investors who believed they could exit positions are discovering the asset class is significantly less liquid than assumed. A colorful footnote arrived from Delaware, where a magistrate ordered JPMorgan to continue paying the legal fees of Charlie Javice — founder of student financial aid startup Frank, convicted of fraud in connection with JPMorgan's 175 million dollar acquisition — and to pay interest on amounts the bank had withheld. SpaceX faces a technically complex setup on July 7th, when the post-IPO analyst quiet period expires simultaneously with Nasdaq-100 index inclusion, creating automatic passive fund buying at the same moment Wall Street publishes its first formal research on the company's valuation.