- July 23, 2026
Every month I write a newsletter called Noise Reduction, where I try to separate what actually matters in the markets from what’s just loud. Here’s the piece from June that matters most.
If you only read headlines last month, you’d think something broke. Semiconductors — the same stocks that carried the market all year — sold off hard, the Nasdaq dropped 2.75%, and the S&P 500 slipped about 1%. Cue the “is this the top?” takes.
Now look under the hood. Small caps gained 3.74%. The equal-weight S&P 500 — where a regional bank counts the same as an AI giant — rose 2.38%. Money didn’t leave the market; it rotated out of a handful of expensive tech names and into banks, industrials, and health care. Breadth got better while the headlines got worse.
The index fell. The average stock went up. That’s not a crash — that’s a rotation.
And none of it says the chip story is over. Even the pros read June as a mid-cycle breather, not a finale — a valuation reset in the most crowded names, while the underlying earnings engine stayed intact.
The Fed story cooled off too. A month ago, markets were bracing for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh to start hiking rates — and repriced trillions of dollars based on how many times one unelected official said “price stability.” Since then, futures markets have quietly walked about half a rate hike back out of the forecast. Inflation is still too high, but it’s decelerating — the Cleveland Fed’s nowcast has it easing again in July. And oil fell nearly 17% in June as the Middle East stepped back from the brink, which does more for inflation than any press conference ever has.
What this means for your plan
Diversification finally got paid. For two years, owning anything besides a handful of mega-cap tech names felt like a mistake. June was the reminder of why you own the boring stuff anyway — when leadership rotates, nobody sends a save-the-date.
Don’t trade Fed meetings. Markets repriced the entire rate outlook twice in about six weeks — hawkish panic in, half of it back out. Anyone repositioning their portfolio around each headline paid the price both ways.
Check how June felt. If a month where the average stock went up felt violent in your portfolio, that’s information — it usually means too much is riding on one theme.
None of this means the coast is clear. The next Fed decision lands July 28–29, and sticky inflation can still bite. But June’s lesson stands: the scary month was a reshuffle, not a fire alarm. Constructive — not complacent.
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Disclosure: Certain sections of this commentary contain forward-looking statements based on our reasonable expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Diversification does not assure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets. All indices are unmanaged and investors cannot invest directly into an index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted average of 30 actively traded blue-chip stocks. The S&P 500 Index is a broad-based measurement of changes in stock market conditions based on the average performance of 500 widely held common stocks. The Nasdaq Composite Index measures the performance of all issues listed in the Nasdaq Stock Market, except for rights, warrants, units, and convertible debentures. The MSCI EAFE Index is a float-adjusted market capitalization index designed to measure developed market equity performance, excluding the U.S. and Canada. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is a market capitalization-weighted index composed of companies representative of the market structure of 26 emerging market countries in Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Basin. It excludes closed markets and those shares in otherwise free markets that are not purchasable by foreigners. The Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index is an unmanaged market value-weighted index representing securities that are SEC-registered, taxable, and dollar-denominated. It covers the U.S. investment-grade fixed-rate bond market, with index components for a combination of the Bloomberg government and corporate securities, mortgage-backed pass-through securities, and asset-backed securities. The Bloomberg U.S. Corporate High Yield Index covers the USD-denominated, non-investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bond market. Securities are classified as high-yield if the middle rating of Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P is Ba1/BB+/BB+ or below.
Steven Grogan is an investment advisor representative registered with Savvy Advisors, Inc. (“Savvy”). All investment advisory services offered by Steven Grogan are offered through Savvy. Atticus Wealth Management is an independent marketing brand name used by Steven Grogan for advertising and marketing purposes only. Atticus Wealth Management and Savvy are not related or affiliated.
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