June 2025 in returns

June 2025 kept the equity advance running while crypto quietly detached from it. The Nasdaq rose 6.6%, Nvidia 16.9%, the Russell 2000 5.3% and Japan's Nikkei 6.6%, with 600 of 868 stocks (69%) higher — a broad, unremarkable, healthy month. Crypto did nothing of the sort: Bitcoin added 2.4%, Ethereum fell 1.7%, and just 18 of 86 coins (21%) finished green. That combination — flat majors, one coin in five green — describes an asset class where the index is being held up by its largest members while everything beneath quietly bleeds.

Equity leadership stayed exactly where May had left it, only more so. AST SpaceMobile gained 102.6%, EchoStar 56.2%, Credo 51.9%, Nebius 50.6% and CoreWeave 46.5%, with Coinbase (+42.1%) and Robinhood (+41.5%) alongside — satellites, data centres, interconnect and the brokerages that monetise enthusiasm. The losers were consumer staples and utilities doing what they do in a risk-on month: Lululemon -25.0%, Brown-Forman -18.6%, PG&E -17.3%, Smucker -12.8%. Nothing here is dramatic, which is rather the point. June is the calm middle of 2025's second act — the AI complex compounding steadily, the speculative tail of crypto being ignored, and no visible sign yet of what either would do next.