Markets were closed Monday for Memorial Day and spent the other four days setting records. Tuesday the Russell 2000 gained 1.77%, the Nasdaq 1.17%, and the S&P 500 0.61%, all to record closes, despite fresh strikes in the Iran conflict over the long weekend. Wednesday the Dow set a new record while chips pulled back. Thursday the S&P and Nasdaq set records again despite the hottest PCE inflation reading in nearly three years, and the Russell 2000 printed an all-time high. Friday sealed it: the S&P 500 finished the week up 1.4%, its ninth straight weekly gain and the first nine-week streak since December 2023. The Nasdaq added 2.4% for the week and closed May up 8% at 26,972. The Russell 2000 added 1.8% and finished at 2,919. Dell jumped roughly 30% Friday and more than 40% on the abbreviated week after earnings showed heavy AI server demand, with Snowflake posting a similar move. Technology gained 4.6% as a sector while energy lagged. Crude oil fell to $87.93, a long way down from $109 in mid-May. Gold rose to $4,578. The 10-year settled at 4.443%.
The most important number of the week was not an index level. It was crude. Oil falling from $109 to under $88 in two weeks did the work the Fed cannot: it took the energy impulse out of forward inflation math in real time, and that is why equities could shrug the hottest PCE print in almost three years and keep setting records. The AI demand validation also moved downstream. The thread that started with semiconductors and ran through Cisco’s networking orders now shows up in Dell’s server numbers. Demand confirmed at three separate layers of the stack in three consecutive weeks is what a durable capex cycle looks like.
The caution is the same one that applies to every melt-up: a market that ignores hot inflation data is borrowing against the assumption that oil keeps falling. The Russell 2000 at an all-time high is the constructive read for the micro-cap tape; small caps making records alongside large caps means breadth is participating, not just the index heavyweights. Nine straight weeks is rare. The tenth is where streaks usually meet their test.
Coverage ledger: BTBT’s HPC and AI cloud segment is the closest thing in the coverage library to a pure read on the server demand Dell just confirmed. AEYE compounds independently of the streak. SNES and the rest of the quality screen matter precisely because weeks like this reward owning real businesses before the tape turns. Full dossiers in the research library.