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Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 52,000 for the first time as Alphabet officially joins the index.

• The Supreme Court temporarily blocks Trump from removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

• Rocket Lab agrees to acquire Iridium in a major move to expand its space business.

• Comcast plans to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky as a standalone public company.

• Sticky inflation keeps the prospect of additional Fed rate hikes firmly on the table.

Market News

Inflation Can Wait... Apparently

After a difficult week that saw the Nasdaq fall 4.6% and the S&P 500 lose 2%, Wall Street rebounded.

• The S&P 500 climbed 1.2% to 7,440.43.

• The Nasdaq gained 2.1% to 25,820.14.

• The Dow Jones closed above 52,000 for the first time in its history.

Stocks broadly moved higher as investors welcomed a break from the recent selloff.

Catalyst No. 1 came from a marble building, not a trading floor. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that President Trump cannot, for now, remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh joining the three liberal justices.

Markets translated the legalese instantly: the Fed stays independent, which means monetary policy remains (theoretically) about the economy rather than politics. The same Court separately expanded the President’s power to fire officials at other agencies… but the part Wall Street cared about was the central bank, and that part went the market’s way.

Catalyst No. 2 was not exactly “good news,” but it was less-bad news. The U.S. and Iran were working through a fragile pause in strikes and a path back toward talks after a messy weekend of tit-for-tat escalation.

Oil still settled higher on Monday, so this was not a clean “oil risk is gone” tape, but traders treated the absence of a wider worst-case spiral as reason enough to put risk back on.

Then there’s the Dow. Effective Monday, Alphabet replaced Verizon in the 30-stock index. S&P Dow Jones Indices said Verizon’s low share price had left it at only about half a percentage point of the price-weighted Dow, while Alphabet gives the index broader exposure to advertising, cloud, AI, hardware, autonomous mobility, healthcare tech, and media distribution.

The divisor was adjusted before the market opened, so the Dow didn't rise solely due to the index change. Even so, the addition gives the index greater exposure to large technology companies.

Alphabet gained about 4.8%, while Verizon dropped around 5.3%. Beyond the index change, it reflects the market's growing preference for technology companies tied to AI and cloud services.

The cloud on the horizon? Inflation. May PCE inflation hit 4.1% year over year, the first reading above 4% in three years, while CPI showed a similar 4.2% print. That has flipped the Fed conversation from “when cuts?” to “are hikes back?” just as the June jobs report lands Thursday morning, July 2, before a Friday market closure for Independence Day.

Peel Take: The rebound was driven more by easing fears than improving fundamentals. Investors welcomed signs of Fed independence, reduced geopolitical tensions, and renewed confidence in AI, but inflation remains elevated, and the possibility of further rate hikes is still on the table. With narrow market leadership, sticky inflation, and a busy week ahead, volatility is likely to remain high.

What's Ripe

Iridium Communications (IRDM) 25.4%

• Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium for roughly $8 billion, about $54/share, consisting of $27 in cash plus Rocket Lab stock, representing a roughly 24% premium to Iridium’s prior close. The deal is expected to close in mid-2027.

• Iridium’s established low-Earth-orbit satellite network, global L-band spectrum, and more than 2.5 million subscribers across government, defense, aviation, maritime, and commercial markets. The acquirer also ripped. Rocket Lab closed up about 15.9%, meaning everyone at this wedding got cake.

• Peel Take: Getting bought at a fat premium is the closest thing to winning the lottery a public shareholder gets, so congrats to the IRDM bagholders-turned-winners. The real tell is that Rocket Lab’s stock rose on news that it is spending $8B; acquirers usually get punished for opening the wallet.

Tesla (TSLA) 8.5%

• Tesla led the Magnificent Seven rebound and helped drag the Nasdaq out of last week’s tech funk. The bull case remains the same high-octane blend: robotaxi hopes, FSD progress, AI optionality, and expectations around Q2 deliveries.

• Traders rotated back out of last week’s defensive hidey-holes and into high-beta growth. When risk appetite comes back, TSLA tends to be first in line at the buffet.

• Peel Take: Tesla is less a car company and more the market’s mood ring. The +8.5% is impressive, but the robotaxi dream still has to grow from pilot-stage sizzle into an actual, scalable fleet before the $1T+ valuation math fully pencils out.

What's Rotten

TopBuild (BLD) 15.5%

• TopBuild missed the rally by a mile. Shares fell about 15% after shareholders approved QXO’s acquisition of the building-products company.

• The strange part is that BLD is the target, not the acquirer. The original deal valued TopBuild at $505/share, but shareholders can elect either $505 in cash or 20.2 QXO shares, subject to proration. With QXO at around $17.82, the stock-election value was roughly $360, which is where BLD landed.

• Peel Take: Nothing ruins an acquisition premium like the fine print. TopBuild holders were staring at a sexy $505 cash headline, but Monday’s tape cared a lot more about the QXO-stock side of the deal, and that math looked way less sexy. When a target drops 15% after shareholders approve the buyout, that is the market yelling: “Read the proration rules.” Not rotten because TopBuild suddenly forgot how insulation works; rotten because merger math can turn a premium into a banana peel fast.

Verizon (VZ) 5.2%

• Verizon got kicked out of the Dow after 22 years to make room for Alphabet, an ego bruise, a relevance bruise, and a source of index-rebalance selling pressure. It also announced a 50/50 international joint venture with the U.K.’s BT, combining roughly $4B in annual revenue, more than 3,000 customers, and operations across 180+ countries. Verizon will make a $625M equalization payment tied to the deal.

• And because telecom investors needed one more punch to the face, Verizon said it expects to record a $700M-$800M second-quarter loss tied to classifying the contributed international business as held for sale.

• Peel Take: Brutal triple bogey: demoted from the Dow, writing a check to a partner, and pre-announcing a chunky charge, all in one news cycle. The dividend crowd will still hang around, but stocks get booted from the Dow when they stop mattering inside a price-weighted index.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Barclays

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📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Real Estate Master Program: Master Real Estate Investing from the Ground Up

Master acquisitions, development, underwriting, and financial modeling for real estate investing.

🎓 Check out the Real Estate Master Program

🌟 WSO Academy Q2 Update

🤖 AI Mock Interviews Are Now Live

We’re excited to share that AI Mock Interviews are now live on the Academy dashboard!

The goal here is pretty simple: give students more ways to practice in between mentor calls or when they’re in a pinch.

You can use AI Mock Interviews to:

✅ Practice technical, behavioral, and case-style questions

✅ Get quick feedback on your answers

✅ Spot weak areas before live interviews

✅ Get more reps in before mentor calls or real interviews

Mentor calls are still the best way to practice with real professionals, but AI Mock Interviews give you another way to stay sharp and get extra reps between mentor sessions.

Check out more on WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• Rocket Lab agrees to acquire Iridium in an approximately $8 billion cash-and-stock deal.

• Comcast moves forward with plans to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate public company.

• Verizon and BT form a global enterprise joint venture to expand their international business services.

• OpenAI is reportedly considering delaying its IPO until 2027 to pursue a higher valuation.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

Memory chip shortages are pushing up electronics prices. Which gadget would you hate to pay more for?

Smartphone: 61.0% // Laptop: 22.0% // Gaming console: 7.3% // Other: 9.7%

Student Success Corner

👉 Are you next? Find out with WSO Academy

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

David has d books, which is 3 times as many as Jeff has and 1/2 as many as Paula has. How many books do the three of them have altogether, in terms of d?

Answer: 10d/3

Today

A researcher plans to identify each participant in a certain medical experiment with a code consisting of either a single letter or a pair of distinct letters written in alphabetical order. What is the least number of letters that can be used if there are 12 participants, and each participant is to receive a different code?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

Happy Investing,
Chris, Vyom, Ankit, Mitchell, Fernanda, Nick, & Patrick

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