Apple’s Foldable iPhone Surge Saves the S&P 500 From a Chip Rout as Weak Jobs Report Divides Wall Street

NEW YORK — Apple’s stock surged nearly 5% Thursday, adding roughly $182 billion in market capitalization in a single session and single-handedly preventing what would have been a much sharper decline for the broader S&P 500, as a weak June jobs report, an ongoing chip sector pullback and lingering Middle East uncertainty sent most of the rest of the technology market lower heading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

The S&P 500 managed to finish essentially flat on the day, down just 0.2% by midday before recovering ground, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.8%. Eight of the 10 largest market capitalization moves in the S&P 500 on Thursday were negative, including sharp declines for Tesla and Micron Technology. Without Apple’s contribution, analysts noted, the broader index would have recorded a considerably more painful session.

The catalyst for Apple’s surge was a Bloomberg report indicating the company had instructed its parts suppliers to prepare for a large-scale rollout of foldable iPhones this fall, with the expected production target for 2026 now rising to approximately 10 million units, up from earlier forecasts of 7 to 8 million. That order volume increase signals Apple’s confidence that consumer demand for its first foldable smartphone will exceed initial projections. Alongside the foldable, Apple is reportedly preparing roughly 70 million iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max units, setting up what the company expects to be one of the most commercially significant product launches in its recent history.

The foldable iPhone news came at an opportune moment for Apple investors who have been watching the stock navigate a difficult stretch defined by supply chain pressures, memory chip cost increases and publicly disclosed price hikes on its Mac and iPad lineups. The prospect of a new form factor capable of driving a significant upgrade cycle among the company’s existing customer base gave investors a concrete growth narrative to focus on heading into the back half of 2026.

The rest of the day told a very different story for much of the technology sector. Tesla fell 7.4% even as the company reported June vehicle deliveries that came in 18% above analyst estimates, a counterintuitive reaction that market observers attributed almost entirely to profit-taking following a 13% price surge over the prior four trading sessions. Micron Technology, similarly near all-time highs after its extraordinary year-to-date run of more than 300%, declined 5.8%, weighed down in part by a price-fixing lawsuit related to older memory types that circulated through the financial news cycle during the session. Both moves contributed to the Nasdaq’s underperformance, though neither Tesla nor Micron is a component of the Dow, which helps explain the divergence between the blue-chip index’s gain and the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s decline.

The macro backdrop for Thursday’s session was defined by the June nonfarm payrolls report, which landed well below expectations. The Labor Department reported 57,000 new positions added in June, against economist forecasts of 110,000. May’s payroll numbers were revised downward as well. The unemployment rate edged lower to 4.2% from 4.3%, a technically positive reading but one that contradicts the weak hiring figure and reflects a falling labor force participation rate rather than broad employment strength. Treasury yields declined in response to the soft data, as bond market investors recalibrated expectations toward a Federal Reserve that would face reduced pressure to raise interest rates given the cooling labor market.

The geopolitical dimension of Thursday’s session involved the Strait of Hormuz, where the vessel backlog waiting to transit the critical waterway fell to 380 ships from 485 earlier in the week. However, only five ships actually passed through the strait in the preceding 24 hours, underscoring how far the shipping situation remains from normal despite diplomatic progress. U.S. and Iranian negotiators wrapped up the latest round of talks in Doha claiming what participants described as positive momentum, though no concrete breakthroughs have been announced. The next scheduled discussion will follow funeral proceedings for Iran’s late Supreme Leader, which are expected to conclude by July 9, a timeline that introduces additional uncertainty about when the substantive diplomatic work can resume.

Oil prices continued falling Thursday despite the limited physical improvement in Hormuz traffic, suggesting markets are pricing in future progress rather than current conditions. Gold and Bitcoin rallied simultaneously for the second consecutive session, a combination that some market participants described as unusual and potentially significant. The SPDR Gold Shares fund rose 2.1% while the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF gained 2.6%. When investors move into both traditional and digital safe-haven assets at the same time, it typically signals a broad underlying uncertainty rather than a specific sectoral rotation.

The broader week produced a pattern analysts have flagged as the dominant theme of 2026’s market: a clear rotation from high-flying technology and semiconductor growth names into steadier, more traditionally valued sectors including financials and industrials. The Dow outperforming the Nasdaq by 1.5 percentage points on Thursday alone illustrated that rotation in concentrated form. The chip sector’s two-day decline followed an 82% first-half gain across semiconductor stocks broadly, making some degree of consolidation not only expected but arguably overdue. The speed of the correction, however, has surprised even observers who anticipated a pullback after the sector’s extraordinary run.

With U.S. markets closed Friday for the Independence Day holiday, which falls on Saturday this year, investors have a long weekend to reassess their positions before trading resumes Monday. The Fourth of July closure also pushed the jobs report to Thursday rather than its usual Friday slot, making this week’s already compressed four-day schedule feel even more event-dense than typical pre-holiday periods.

Monday’s reopening will bring investors back to a market still processing a complicated set of signals: Apple’s foldable iPhone optimism colliding with a softening labor market, an ongoing diplomatic standoff in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, a chip sector finding its footing after an extraordinary first half, and a Federal Reserve whose next move remains genuinely uncertain in a way that it has not been for much of the past several months. Whether Apple’s foldable iPhone story can maintain the momentum it generated Thursday, or whether the broader rotation out of technology names continues to dominate, will likely define the market’s first week of July trading when it resumes after the holiday break.