Big Expectations for Prime Day: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Tuesday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of trading Tuesday. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to a weak market open.

1. The tech selloff is accelerating, with futures on the Nasdaq 100 tumbling more than 2%. Alphabet, Nvidia and Oracle are all sharply lower in premarket trading, following steep losses in Big Tech stocks yesterday. Asian markets slumped, with South Korea’s Kospi diving 10%, weighed down by chip makers such as Samsung Electronics. European indexes are also in the red, with Dutch tech champion ASML retreating 5%. The artificial-intelligence rally has gone in reverse in recent days, prompted by jitters over AI companies’ heavy spending and looming Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes. SpaceX has slumped since its exuberant IPO earlier this month and continued to decline ahead of today’s opening bell. (WSJ)

Following a streak of week-over-week gains in the S&P 500 and the more than 20% quarter-to-date gain in the Nasdaq Composite even after yesterday’s selloff, it isn’t surprising to see some profit-taking. We did some of that with the Pro Portfolio yesterday when we locked in a more than 70% gain on some Applied Materials (AMAT) shares and a nearly 450% profit on a slug of Marvell (MRVL).

We’ll be watching the 50-day moving average for the Nasdaq Composite at 25,619.20 and the S&P 500 at 7,328.60 to see if those support levels hold. Should this morning’s Flash June PMI report for the U.S. show some favorable findings on inflation, that could lead the market to re-think the two rate hikes it sees between now and Q1 2027.

There are reasons to think the worst of the inflation data is likely behind us, and that will lead us to re-focus our Portfolio shopping list should those support levels discussed above hold. More on that inflation thinking in a moment, but first a reminder why it’s important to keep our emotions in check, follow the data and other signals.

2. A private cloud-computing firm backed by Super Micro Computer has clinched artificial-intelligence infrastructure deals worth $7.8 billion. It’s a sign of the continuing strong demand for Nvidia (NVDA) chips and the growth of AI outside the U.S. Argentum AI told Barron’s it has signed two major long-term AI infrastructure deals to deploy a total of 47,000 Nvidia GB300 chips at a 300-megawatt data center in Poland. The deals have not been announced previously. (Barron’s)

3. There were signs of inflationary pressures easing in June. Although input costs continued to rise rapidly during the month, the rate of inflation eased to the slowest since February, just before the outbreak of war in the Middle East. Weaker increases in input prices were seen across both the manufacturing and service sectors, with the pace of inflation remaining sharper in the former. Cost inflation eased across Germany, France and the rest of the eurozone as a whole. In turn, the rate of output price inflation also slowed in June, albeit to a lesser extent than was seen for input costs. Here too, manufacturers continued to record stronger inflation than their services counterparts. (S&P Global Flash Eurozone PMI)

While S&P Global (SPGI) doesn’t publish sub-index data for Prices like ISM does, the Flash June findings for the eurozone suggest inflation pressures have peaked and could drop further in the months ahead as the impact of falling oil, gas, diesel and other prices are felt. At 9:45 AM ET today, when S&P publishes its Flash June PMI report for the U.S., we’ll be looking to see if a similar trend is found for prices, but we’ll also want to see its findings on job creation, new order growth, and inventories.

ISM will deliver its June Manufacturing PMI and June Non-Manufacturing PMI reports on July 1 and July 6, respectively.

4. Oil prices fell Tuesday after the U.S. waived Iranian sanctions on crude and petrochemical products for 60 days, in a sign that talks are progressing well. The Treasury Department announced a waiver on sanctions Monday through to Aug. 21, allowing Tehran to sell oil in dollars for the first time in decades. (Barron’s) Diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran has translated into relief at the pump for Americans, data showed on Monday, with gasoline prices falling for a sixth straight week and marking a 15% drop ‌from their May peak. The national average price of gasoline fell 14.1 cents a gallon over the last week to $3.85 per gallon on Monday, according to price-tracking service GasBuddy. (Reuters)

While Bank of America (BAC) is now calling for up to three-rate hikes this year, the flow-through of lower energy prices is starting to be seen. Prospects for that to continue suggest BofA’s call is likely to prove to be rather aggressive, and most likely incorrect. With the average price for a gallon of gas still up more than 20% compared to their year-ago level, per AAA data, consumers will continue to feel price pressure on their spending dollars but that should improve as time goes on.

Near-term, that lingering pain equates to a continued tailwind for several Pro Portfolio holdings… including Amazon (AMZN) and its 2026 Prime Day event.

5. Amazon.com’s upcoming Prime Day will be a litmus test for the kind of boost agentic shopping tools can have on the e-commerce company moving forward. Prime Day is a sales event for Amazon Prime members. This year, Prime Day will run from June 23 to June 26, giving members four days to check out deals on a laundry list of items, including clothes, electronics, beauty products, and more. (Barron’s)

Our position was cash-strapped consumers would turn to digital shopping to help stretch the disposable spending dollars they did have. Trailing three-month data in the May Retail Sales report as well as the same analysis for Costco’s (COST) monthly sales figures showed that line of reasoning was correct.

That trend is expected to continue with Adobe’s (ADBE) latest Prime Day forecast calling for average daily online spend during the event to be 84% higher than overall average daily spending in June. Other forecasts see U.S. online spending for the event hitting a record-breaking $26.3 billion, with Amazon (AMZN) projected to capture roughly 60% of all spending during the shopping window. The question we’re asking is how much spending pull-forward, including that for Back-to-School shopping, will that account for?

6. Ever since President Trump returned to office last January, he and the Supreme Court have been locked in an uneasy tango. Now, the tempo is about to quicken. Over the next two weeks, the court will race to clear its docket before the justices take their annual summer break. Four remaining cases involve Trump’s aggressive efforts to expand his own power. In at least a couple of them, the justices seem inclined to rein him in. What the court says—and how it says it—will help define its relationship with a pugnacious president for the remainder of his time in office. (WSJ)

We’re not one to play politics; we’re investors after all and that means our focus is on policy and its implications. With that in mind, we will be paying close attention to the court’s rulings and implications for the White House’s efforts to rebuild what is being referred to as its “tariff wall.”

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: ADP Employment Change (Weekly), S&P Global Flash PMI (June), Richmond Manufacturing & Services Index (June).

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: Carnival (CCL), Korn/Ferry (KFY). PM – FedEx (FDX), KB Home (KBH), Worthington Enterprise (WOR).

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN, COST, and NVDA.