Mega-Cap Tech Saved the Day. June Still Closes Flat.
The Kendall Report · Tuesday, June 30, 2026 · Premarket
KR Market Opinion
After a robust session on Monday, with the S&P up 1.2% and the NASDAQ up better than 2%, we are watching exactly the metrics I flagged on Thursday night and again in Sunday’s Substack letter resolve themselves in real time. The negative momentum that began building late last week has neutralized. Markets have moved back into a neutral scenario, the database is showing a little traction returning, and nothing has produced any real follow-through. What we have instead is the setup for a mundane configuration, a market that consolidates and stays inside a choppy zone rather than committing to a direction.
I want to be precise about what neutral means here, because neutral is not the same as safe. There are still elements in the tape that argue for downside follow-through. But the real drivers, the forces that were pushing this market lower into the end of last week, have neutralized almost entirely in the span of a single day. That is the story, and it is a story I have told before. We remain in a headline regime, an environment where a single piece of news can completely turn the market around or cancel out whatever pressure has been building underneath. Monday was that headline day. The forces did not get resolved through some careful process of price discovery, where buyers and sellers grind out a level over days and you can trust the result because it was earned. They got neutralized in one session. When a market reverses its character that fast, on a headline rather than on work, the reversal carries less information than it appears to. It tells you the prior pressure was fragile. It does not tell you the next move is up.
A neutral stance means we are sitting in a pivotal zone as we come into the final trading day of June. Run the month and the numbers are nearly flat. The S&P is down roughly 2% and the NASDAQ is off about three and change for June, which after everything is essentially a flat month, not negative in any meaningful sense. That itself is worth sitting with for a moment. For all the noise, all the momentum that built and then dissolved, the month is going to print close to unchanged. The next couple of weeks are starting to set up as a continuation of that flat zone, with a slight bias to the downside. On the S&P 500 I still think 7200 is likely, and there are paths lower in the pattern beyond that. I am not going to walk through those lower targets in detail right now, because Monday’s action stabilized the picture enough that mapping them out would imply a conviction the tape has not yet earned. We saw some stabilization overnight and a bit of follow-through, but nothing material.
Today is a housing day. The data on the calendar is not the kind that moves this market or this sector in a big way. We are looking at a continuation of the same theme, a housing market that stays under pressure, particularly on price. In several of the larger markets, we are still seeing price cuts come through and activity stay muted. Last month’s reports did show a little improvement, which was something, but nothing material enough to change the direction of travel.
Here is what actually carried Monday: the mega-cap technology names. The mega-cap growth complex saved the day, and the uncomfortable truth is that the market would need another outsized day from that same group today to push June into positive territory, which looks very unlikely. Looking around the planet overnight, across London and the other major venues, it appears the tech follow-through continues. The semiconductors caught a bid again. That is happening even as our own models flag real changes underneath, with NVIDIA and a handful of other key names showing enough weakness and a shift in posture that we are seeing some liquidations in parts of the sector. It is selective, and it is not material yet. But the divergence is worth naming plainly: the index is being carried by a narrow group of stocks while the models underneath that same group are quietly starting to deteriorate. That is not a configuration that resolves comfortably in either direction quickly.
My expectation is more of the same over the next couple of sessions, consolidation with no decisive move. We get employment numbers toward the end of the week, and I do not expect surprises in the labor data at any level, whether it is claims or the payroll prints. In fact, the employment numbers are expected to increase again. So the backdrop stays stable, with nothing drastic pushing the market either way.
On inflation, my view is that the inflation trade really dissipates over time. I saw a couple of comments from European central bankers who continue to operate under the illusion that supply chain disruptions are the problem. You cannot fix supply disruptions with interest rates. There is a genuinely amateur level of understanding at the central bank level on this point, a belief that the only tool they have, the interest rate, is the right tool for a problem it cannot touch. Europe is different, the mandate there is different from the US, but the instinct is the same and it is wrong.
What folks are starting to center on is what Kevin Warsh is likely to do at the next meeting. I have been talking about this. My hope is that he does not even hold a conference call. One of the comments he made at the last meeting referenced a mentor, someone he respected, who told him that conference calls and meeting with the media and talking to the public are good only as long as you actually have something to say. If they hold no conference at all at the next FOMC meeting, that is going to confuse the market even more, and I think that confusion is the point, or at least the necessary cost of something healthier. Part of the coming transition is exactly that, a kind of blackout where market participants have to do their own homework instead of leaning on forward guidance and expectations. For years the market has been trained to trade the press conference rather than the data, to wait for the signal from the podium and position around the words. Take the podium away and you force participants back into the actual work of figuring out where the economy and the rates structure are headed on their own. That changes how the central bank operates and how the market interacts with it. I think that is healthy, I think it is overdue, and I think it is coming.
Economic Calendar
Week of June 29 - July 03
June 30
09:00 ET: FHFA Housing Price Index
For: Apr | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: 0.2% | Prior: 0.1%
09:00 ET: S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index
For: Apr | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: 0.8% | Prior: 0.8%
09:45 ET: Chicago PMI
For: Jun | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: 55.0 | Prior: 62.7
10:00 ET: Consumer Confidence
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 93.9 | Prior: 93.1
July 01
07:00 ET: MBA Mortgage Applications Index
For: 06/27 | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: NA | Prior: 1.0%
08:15 ET: ADP Employment Change
For: Jun | Trading Impact: Medium | KR Forecast: 125K | Prior: 122K
09:45 ET: S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing PMI - Final
For: Jun | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: NA | Prior: 55.7
10:00 ET: Construction Spending
For: May | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: 0.6% | Prior: 0.4%
10:00 ET: ISM Manufacturing Index
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 54.0% | Prior: 54.0%
10:30 ET: EIA Crude Oil Inventories
For: 06/27 | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: NA | Prior: -6.09M
July 02
08:30 ET: Nonfarm Payrolls
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 130K | Prior: 172K
08:30 ET: Nonfarm Private Payrolls
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 98K | Prior: 120K
08:30 ET: Unemployment Rate
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 4.3% | Prior: 4.3%
08:30 ET: Average Hourly Earnings
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 0.3% | Prior: 0.3%
08:30 ET: Average Workweek
For: Jun | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 34.3 | Prior: 34.3
08:30 ET: Initial Claims
For: 06/27 | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: 218K | Prior: 215K
08:30 ET: Continuing Claims
For: 06/20 | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: NA | Prior: 1821K
10:00 ET: Factory Orders
For: May | Trading Impact: Low | KR Forecast: 2.0% | Prior: 4.8%
10:30 ET: EIA Natural Gas Inventories
For: 06/27 | Trading Impact: High | KR Forecast: NA | Prior: +76 bcf
