Wall Street Review: Techs Sell Off Amid Profit-Taking, Rising Bond Yields

Wall Street’s weekslong stock rally came to an abrupt halt this week amid a tech sell-off driven by profit-taking and rising bond yields, following another robust jobs report.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged down by 0.32 percent to close at 50,866. The S&P 500 fell by 2.59 percent to 7,383. The Nasdaq Composite sank by 4.68 percent, while the Russell 2000 dropped by 2.94 percent.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index closed the week at 21.51, down by 40.4 percent.

Stocks opened lower on the first day of June amid a spike in oil prices and bond yields, as well as profit-taking.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures soared more than 5 percent to nearly $93 per barrel as Iran threatened that it would suspend talks with the United States in response to Israel’s continued military operations in Lebanon.

Higher oil prices pushed bond prices lower and yields higher, with the yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note re-taking the 4.5 percent mark, extending May’s nearly 6-basis-point climb.

Despite the weak opening, stock prices quickly turned around by late morning, following a bullish headline out of Nvidia announcing that its artificial intelligence (AI) cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure, with its partners expanding capacity to meet growing demand across enterprises and nations.

“Every company and every country need AI factory infrastructure to turn data into intelligence,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “NVIDIA AI Clouds bring full-stack AI factories closer to the regions, industries and developers building the next generation of AI, from model training to real-time inference and AI agents that will transform how people and organizations work.”

Nvidia’s shares gained 6 percent for the day, helping the tech-heavy Nasdaq up by 0.4 percent. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones posted moderate gains, too, up by 0.3 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.

Stocks opened lower on June 2 amid profit-taking in the software sector, which had rallied the previous week. But they quickly turned around on semiconductor strength led by Marvell Technologies and Broadcom, helping the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 close fractionally higher, while the Dow Jones fared better, up by 0.45 percent.

Marvell Technologies rallied on positive comments from Nvidia’s CEO, who called it the next trillion-dollar company. Marvell’s shares gained 32.52 percent during the regular trading session.

Broadcom, Inc. rose by 4.70 percent amid prospects of a windfall from Alphabet’s announcement of an $80 billion spending spree on AI infrastructure.

Another market-moving event was the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which showed that job openings in the United States increased by 731,000 to 7.618 million in April.

The latest JOLTS reading is the highest since November 2024 and well above market expectations of 6.88 million, underscoring labor market resilience despite rising energy costs from the war in Iran, which have raised fears of stagnation.

“The April numbers extend a clear recovery arc: Openings have risen steadily from December’s trough, gaining more than one million over four months,” ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud told the Epoch Times.

Digging deeper into JOLTS, Bachaud points to a weakness in hiring.

“The hire rate has been stuck below 3.5 percent since mid-2025, and the quits rate, the most reliable real-time gauge of worker confidence, remains subdued at 1.9 percent. When workers aren’t quitting, it tells us they don’t trust the market enough to risk leaving a job they already have, even as more openings appear,” she said.

The weakness in hiring helped ease fears of wage and inflation pressures, calming down the bond market and trimming bond yield gains.

Stocks opened lower on June 3 amid another rise in oil prices and bond yields, following a flare-up of U.S.–Iran strikes that undermined the fragile ceasefire.

Small caps, which are particularly sensitive to both oil prices and interest rates, were hit the hardest, with the Russell 2000 falling by 1.29 percent for the day. The Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq declined by 1.21 percent, 0.74 percent, and 0.89 percent, respectively.

Another sector suffering losses was private credit fund managers, following another wave of redemptions, which this time hit the Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund and the Partners Fund.

Techs were mixed, with the software sector selling off and the hardware sector extending the previous day’s rally, led by Marvell and Broadcom.

Stocks opened lower on June 4 amid profit-taking in the tech sector, following earnings reports from Broadcom, CrowdStrike Holdings, and Ciena Corporation.

All three tech companies reported strong top and bottom-line results, but not strong enough to justify the hype behind the tech sector.

Broadcom, CrowdStrike, and Ciena shares closed down 12.58 percent, 3.81 percent, and 13.66 percent, respectively.

Another driver of trading was the release of another labor market report. U.S.-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May 2026, the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report.

May’s reading is the highest since January, up from 83,387 in April, indicating some weakness in the labor market ahead of the June 5 payroll report and helping stabilize Treasury bond yields, with the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield hovering around 4.5 percent.

Aiding the stabilization in bond yields was a decline in oil prices, following a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

Steady bond yields and lower oil prices helped the broader market make a sharp turnaround by late morning, as investors pulled money from hot tech stocks and plowed it into sectors that have been underperforming, such as healthcare and financials.

By late afternoon, the turnaround evolved into a broad rally, led by the Dow Jones, which gained 875 points, or 1.73 percent, for the day, and the small-cap Russell 2000, which gained 1.45 percent. The S&P 500 posted a moderate gain of 0.41 percent, while the Nasdaq closed with a fractional loss.

The bullish sentiment for equities came to an abrupt halt on the morning of June 5, following another blowout labor market report. The U.S. economy added 172,000 jobs in May, double the market forecast of 85,000.

The strong May reading follows an upwardly revised 179,000 gain in the previous month, pointing to a resilient labor market led by robust growth in leisure and hospitality (70,000)—mainly food services and drinking outlets (48,000).

While strong job growth is good news for Main Street, it is bad news for Wall Street’s bulls, as it increases the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will maintain a tight monetary policy.

“Friday’s jobs report was much stronger than expected and shows that the labor market is turning a corner after a rough past 12 months, driven by fears of AI and geopolitical and tariff uncertainty,” Glen Smith, CEO at Flower Mound, Texas-based GDS Wealth Management, told The Epoch Times.

“The revival of the labor market makes the Federal Reserve’s job easier and allows it to keep rates steady in the meantime as it assesses the volatile inflation situation.”

The bond market reacted negatively to this prospect, with yields resuming their climb across the board, led by the 2-year Treasury bond, up by 12 full basis points.

Higher bond yields prompted a sell-off in the tech sector, where valuations have been stretched after a multi-week rally, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq closing down by 1,121 points, or 4.18 percent. The Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 posted hefty losses, too, down by 3.35 percent and 2.64 percent, respectively, while the Dow fared slightly better, down by 1.35 percent.

“Stocks have experienced a breathtaking rise over the past two months, but we remind investors that we just experienced a correction only two months ago, and while volatility may persist, stocks tend to rebound off a correction low for some time,” Smith added.

He said that while corporate earnings have driven recent market gains, expectations are also rising, and companies may face a tougher bar when earnings season restarts in mid-July, which could keep stock prices range-bound in the near term.