New York, July 13, 2026, 12:09 EDT
U.S. stocks split sharply at midday Monday, with the Nasdaq Composite down 0.9% and the S&P 500 off 0.4% by 11:15 a.m. EDT as another memory-chip selloff met a 4.5% jump in Brent crude to $79.41 a barrel. The Dow eased 0.2%, a smaller move than in tech-heavy benchmarks.
The more useful signal sat under the headline indexes. At about 11:54 a.m., exchange-traded funds, baskets of securities that trade like stocks, showed the equal-weight S&P 500 up 0.18% while the standard fund lost 0.43%, a 0.62-percentage-point gap. Against the Nasdaq-100 fund, the equal-weight advantage was 1.54 points. Equal weighting gives every company the same influence; the standard index gives the biggest companies more sway.
| Market proxy | Price | Day change | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 ETF NYSEARCA:SPY | $751.67 | -0.43% | Large-stock drag |
| Equal-weight S&P 500 ETF NYSEARCA:RSP | $214.69 | +0.18% | Average large-cap holding up |
| Nasdaq-100 ETF NASDAQ:QQQ | $715.68 | -1.36% | Mega-cap growth pressure |
| Semiconductor ETF NASDAQ:SOXX | $559.74 | -3.72% | Chip selloff |
| Energy ETF NYSEARCA:XLE | $56.41 | +2.41% | Oil-driven rotation |
| Health-care ETF (NYSEARCA:XLV) | $161.43 | +0.37% | Defensive demand |
Prices at about 11:54 a.m. EDT.
Market breadth — the count of rising versus falling stocks — backed that narrow-selloff reading. At 9:59 a.m., advancing shares outnumbered decliners by 1.26-to-1 on the NYSE and 1.36-to-1 on Nasdaq even as the technology sector fell 1.3%. Alex Guiliano, chief investment officer at Resonate Wealth Partners, said the conflict was “testing whether the stock market’s broad-based growth can hold,” while Andersen Capital Management founder Peter Andersen said consumers were “showing remarkable resilience” and banks should “probably do fairly well” as earnings begin. Reuters
The rotation was visible in the Dow. Chevron NYSE:CVX rose 2.19% with oil, IBM NYSE:IBM gained 2.07%, and UnitedHealth Group NYSE:UNH added 0.95%. That left a stark 6.12-percentage-point gap between energy and the semiconductor fund — not the usual pattern of a market-wide dash for cash.
The chip break also carried a listing wrinkle. SK hynix’s NASDAQ:SKHY American depositary receipts, or ADRs — U.S.-traded certificates representing foreign shares — fell 7.9% to $154.70 in early trade, yet remained at a 25.6% premium to the Seoul-equivalent price. Cross-asset analyst Nic Puckrin said that premium “likely won’t hold forever”; Phil Blancato of Ladenburg Thalmann saw “obviously a component of profit taking,” while Jing Jie Yu of Morningstar NASDAQ:MORN said capacity arriving in 2027 and 2028 could bring “price erosion.” Reuters
U.S.-traded peers also fell, although the size of the moves varied.
| Company | Late-morning price | Day change | Competitive position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micron Technology NASDAQ:MU | $933.17 | -4.71% | U.S. memory-chip rival |
| Sandisk NASDAQ:SNDK | $1,719.70 | -10.24% | Flash-memory and storage |
| Nvidia NASDAQ:NVDA | $207.03 | -1.86% | Main AI-accelerator supplier |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing NYSE:TSM | $429.13 | -1.15% | Leading advanced-chip foundry |
Prices at about 11:54 a.m. EDT.
Current operating data have not yet matched the stock-price fear. Taiwan Semiconductor said quarterly revenue rose 36% from a year earlier, including a 68% jump in June; its U.S. shares still traded lower. FactSet NYSE:FDS expects nearly 24% earnings growth for S&P 500 companies in the second quarter, but more than 60% for technology, while six of the 11 sectors are forecast to grow less than 10%. The earnings recovery remains heavily concentrated.
But the rotation has limits. Tuesday’s consumer price index, a broad inflation gauge, and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s first congressional monetary-policy testimony arrive with oil near $80 and Treasury yields elevated. Interest-rate markets were assigning a 68% chance of a September increase; a hotter inflation reading or a longer disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could turn the narrow tech unwind into a broader selloff, particularly among smaller companies whose financing costs tend to matter more.
For the afternoon, the cleanest tell is whether the equal-weight fund stays positive while the Nasdaq remains under pressure. If it does, investors are rotating rather than fleeing. If it does not, Monday’s resilience was only a morning reprieve.
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