July 2026 in returns

July completed the reversal June started, and it did so almost perfectly in reverse. Crypto, left for dead after June's rout, finished green — Bitcoin up 7.3% and Ethereum a stronger 18.5% — though Solana's -1.1% and a breadth reading of just 94 of the 187 coins we track (50%) say the recovery was narrower than that headline pair suggests. Equities went the other way at the index level and yet held together underneath: the S&P 500 ended essentially unchanged at -0.1% and the Dow +0.3%, while the Nasdaq fell 3.2% and the Russell 2000 3.1% — but 524 of 870 stocks, roughly 60%, still closed higher. Japan was the month's real casualty, the Nikkei dropping 8.1% as the Bank of Japan intervened to defend a yen pinned near 160, a 40-year low against the dollar.

The rotation underneath was an almost mirror-image unwind of June. June's best names became July's worst — Corning, up 41.0% then, fell 45.9%; KLA went from +57.0% to -39.4%, Marvell from +45.3% to -37.0%, Astera Labs from +40.9% to -35.6% — while June's most-punished software and IT-services names led the recovery: Cognizant swung from -30.5% to +42.9%, Accenture from -33.5% to +33.3%, Atlassian from -27.7% to +29.9%, and Cboe from -27.2% to +27.8%. The driver was cost, not demand. Amazon raised its 2026 capital-expenditure plan to $220 billion citing higher memory prices, Qualcomm warned it would have to raise prices through the memory crunch alongside light guidance, and Sandisk — squarely in the path of both — was the single worst name on the board at -46.6%. Layered on top were an energy shock, as Iran's attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude higher and handed Exxon and Chevron surging profits, and a Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh that markets chose to hear as dovish even as its own officials argued openly for a hike. Expensive AI hardware met dearer inputs, costlier oil and a rates path that refused to fall — and the market simply swapped which half of the ledger it was willing to pay for.