Wall Street Lunch: Dow Plunges 1,200 Points Before Dip-Buyers Pitch In

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Bulls and bears battle as oil, dollar rally. (0:15) Paramount debt cut to junk. (2:39) Amazon buys George Washington University satellite campus. (2:52)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, the dip-buyers and the froth-fighters are trading blows on Wall Street today.

Stocks sank at the opening bell on a global tech selloff sparked by a 7% plunge in South Korea’s Kospi — driven by double-digit declines in Samsung and SK Hynix.

The selloff deepened, and the Dow Jones (DJI) shed 1,200 points — on pace for its worst drop since Liberation Day — while the S&P 500 (SP500) hit its lowest level of 2026.

Treasury yields shot higher, with the 10-year (US10) topping 4.1%. The VIX (VIX) — the fear gauge — hit a three-month high. And gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) sank.

That move in metals looked counterintuitive — gold usually gets a safe-haven bid.

But former J.P. Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic has pointed out that the silver ETF (SLV), along with the South Korea equity ETF (EWY), has been acting more like a meme stock lately.

But the bears couldn’t keep up the momentum. Stocks caught a bid about an hour into trading.

At the time of recording, the major averages are down less than 1.5% at their highs of the day.

A couple of assets, though, are trading with more conviction.

The greenback keeps catching a bid — hitting its highest level since mid-January and on pace for its strongest two-day rally in about a year. The dollar index (DXY) moved back above its 200-day moving average.

And oil prices are going parabolic — with Brent (CO1:COM) and WTI (CL1:COM) up another 7%.

Iraq has cut production by nearly 1.5M barrels per day, and that could rise to 3M if disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz continue.

Robert Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says there’s “a weird tendency in markets to downplay unexpected shocks when they happen.

People don’t like to look like they didn’t see it coming, so they downplay the shock and the impact, he said.

What’s happening now in oil “is absolutely massive.”

Among active stocks, Cigna (CI) slipped after the company said CEO David Cordani is retiring. He’ll be replaced by President and COO Brian Evanko on July 1.

Evanko currently oversees Cigna’s Evernorth Health Services unit, which includes its pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts.

Best Buy (BBY) is up after boosting profit despite soft sales.

“Moving forward to FY27, we are excited about the momentum in our business,” CFO Matt Bilunas said. “We also expect to continue to navigate a mixed macro environment.”

Credo Technology (CRDO) is getting slammed after its Q3 beat wasn’t enough to satisfy investors given valuation.

Needham came to the company’s defense, with analyst N. Quinn Bolton — who really does sound like a Sherlock Holmes character — saying revenue growth is being driven by Active Electrical Cable proliferation and customer diversification.

And Fitch Ratings cut Paramount Skydance’s (PSKY) corporate and long-term debt ratings to junk after the company agreed to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

The deal is expected to leave the combined entity with roughly $79B in net debt.

In other news of notes, tired: educating humans. Wired (quite literally): powering AI bots.

Amazon (AMZN) has struck a deal to acquire George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Ashburn, Va., for about $427M.

The deal was executed through Amazon Data Services, and the price comes out to roughly $3.5M an acre for the 120-acre site.

It’s in Loudoun County — a major U.S. data center hub — and the deed allows Amazon to develop the property into a data or IT center to support its expanding cloud and AI infrastructure.

GW has the option to keep programs and services at the site for up to five years.

And in the Wall Street Research Corner, on Monday, we told you about the Jefferies AI Risk Basket.

On the flip side, Jefferies has now updated its AI Beneficiaries Basket.

The quant team says the bullish AI basket is broadly flat this year — with trading shifting toward risks from AI disintermediation. That’s analyst speak for cutting out the middleman.

They built the basket by using AI to identify about 30 stocks with market caps above $20B that are “direct beneficiaries of the AI boom.”

You know the big names. So here are a few that may not be on your radar: Digital Realty Trust (DLR), Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR), CoreWeave (CRWV), Microchip Technology (MCHP) and Iron Mountain (IRM).

Check out the full list here.