Market Beats | SK Hynix Plans Landmark $29.4 Billion US ADR Listing; Gold Falls Below $4,000; OpenAI Unveils First Custom AI Chip Developed with Broadcom; Florida’s Economic Engine Stalls as Unemployment Surges; Meme-Stock Crowd Rallies Behind Wendy’s to Spark Massive 37% Pre-Market Surge; Candidates Endorsed by Zohran Mamdani Sweep New York Democratic Congressional Primaries; Blackstone Loan on Chicago Office Tower Defaults

—— SK Hynix Plans Landmark $29.4 Billion US ADR Listing; Gold Falls Below $4,000; OpenAI Unveils First Custom AI Chip Developed with Broadcom; Florida’s Economic Engine Stalls as Unemployment Surges; Meme-Stock Crowd Rallies Behind Wendy’s to Spark Massive 37% Pre-Market Surge; Candidates Endorsed by Zohran Mamdani Sweep New York Democratic Congressional Primaries; Blackstone Loan on Chicago Office Tower Defaults

1. SK Hynix Plans Landmark $29.4 Billion US ADR Listing

SK Hynix Inc. is planning to raise 45.45 trillion won ($29.4 billion) in a landmark US listing, as companies along the artificial intelligence supply chain rush to increase capacity to meet memory chip demand. At that size and depending on the exchange rate, the deal could be among the top five share sales of all time, comparable with Saudi Aramco’s then-record 2019 initial public offering, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Companies have been raising record amounts to fund the buildout of AI infrastructure in recent months. SpaceX held the largest initial public offering in history earlier this month, while Alphabet Inc. plans to raise $85 billion to fund its AI plans. And with more mega offerings in the pipeline, the SK Hynix deal will be a test of investor appetite and the market’s ability to absorb such volumes. AI startups Anthropic PBC and OpenAI could both seek to raise tens of billions of dollars as soon as this year.

SK Hynix expects trading to start on July 10, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The South Korean company’s shares extended gains in after-market trading following the ADR announcement.

The insatiable demand for memory chips has fueled breakneck rallies in related stocks, with SK Hynix shares listed in Seoul climbing about 300% this year and exceeding $1 trillion in market value. Still, they have also been volatile at times, as investor sentiment on the AI buildout swings between confidence and caution.

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2. Gold Falls Below $4,000

Gold fell below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since November, as a resurgent dollar and the prospect of higher interest rates bring bullion’s three-year bull market to a halt. Prices slipped as much as 2.9% to $3,999.90 an ounce, retreating for a second session. The precious metal has posted double-digit gains for each of the last three years, more than doubling in price as central banks, money managers and retail investors all piled into the trade. This rally ran out of steam in late January, shortly after the precious metal hit an all-time-high near $5,600 an ounce.

By June, it had fallen more than 20% below its last peak, the threshold that conventionally marks the start of a bear market. Chief among the factors that weighed on bullion’s performance was the outbreak of the US-Iran war. Higher energy prices have fueled inflation and increased the likelihood of rate hikes, making bullion less attractive relative to yield-bearing assets like Treasuries.

Although oil prices are now falling as the US and Iran are negotiating a permanent peace deal, new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh surprised markets with a hawkish tone at his first rate-setting meeting last week, putting more downward pressure on the metal.

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3. OpenAI Unveils First Custom AI Chip Developed with Broadcom

OpenAI unveiled its first custom artificial intelligence chip developed in partnership with Broadcom Inc., part of a bid by the ChatGPT maker to gain an edge by tailoring hardware to better run its AI products. The companies said Wednesday that OpenAI has received the first samples of the chip, called Jalapeno, and is testing how the silicon handles running AI workloads. So far, the accelerator is showing cost savings of roughly 50% compared with typical AI graphics processing units, Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan said in an interview. The finalized chips will be integrated into large data centers from OpenAI-backer Microsoft Corp. and other partners starting later this year.

Tan expects OpenAI and Broadcom should be able to exceed his prior forecast for deploying 1.3 gigawatts worth of chips next year. “We like to think we can do better because there is a lot of demand,” he said. Though OpenAI continues to rely heavily on chips from market leader Nvidia Corp., the startup has worked to broaden its mix of suppliers to meet surging demand for its AI services.

OpenAI has struck multibillion-dollar deals with chipmakers such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Cerebras Systems Inc.

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4. Florida’s Economic Engine Stalls as Unemployment Surges

While the US unemployment rate has been little changed over the past year, joblessness in Florida has surged. It’s climbed more than a percentage point to 4.8%, faster than nearly any other state, and is now among the highest nationwide. Job growth has slowed to a crawl amid a pullback in key industries like real estate, retail and tourism, all of which are highly sensitive to interest rates and consumer demand. That marks a reversal from Florida’s run as a magnet for workers and retirees coming out of the pandemic, when its economy was one of the hottest in the US. It also raises questions about the viability of the state’s growth model as a rising cost of living starts to send would-be Floridians elsewhere. “

By the way its economy is set up, Florida just tends to be more cyclical than the US economy as a whole,” said Jesse Wheeler, a senior macroeconomic analyst at Revelio Labs. “It shares the trends of the US but it tends to exacerbate them.” Rapid population growth in the wake of the pandemic led to a surge in new construction and sent home sales soaring, stoking demand at everything from furniture stores to restaurants. That’s helped fuel almost a million new jobs in Florida since 2019, making it second only to Texas.

But the tide has turned amid worsening affordability problems, a surge in immigration enforcement and a slowdown in tourism. Net domestic migration to Florida totaled just 22,517 people in the year through July 1, 2025, according to Census Bureau figures, less than a tenth of the peak recorded in 2022. And Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism bureau, says the number of visitors fell 1% in the first quarter of 2026 from a year earlier. “We’re highly dependent on tourism and retail,” said Howard Frank, a professor of public policy and administration at Florida International University. “If people aren’t going out to eat, if people aren’t going to Disney, if people are cutting back on discretionary expenses, well, Florida will be hit quite hard.” Some of the most consumer-facing sectors have been among those recording the biggest job losses over the last year: Employment at furniture stores fell 3.7%, while real estate employment was down 3.1% and headcount in accommodations declined 3%.

At the Spanish restaurant La Tremenda in the Miami area, Sharell Ledezma has cut staffing levels by about a third since 2024. Ledezma — who operates in an area with a large immigrant population — said that in addition to rising prices, stricter immigration enforcement is also keeping some customers away.

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5. Meme-Stock Crowd Rallies Behind Wendy’s to Spark Massive 37% Pre-Market Surge

The meme-stock crowd is rallying behind another beaten up American icon — Wendy’s Co., the fast-food chain known for the Frosty, Dave’s Triple burger and the Biggie Deal. The company’s shares, which had been on a steady downward slide for the past three years, suddenly surged as much as 37% in pre-market trading on Wednesday. There was no news announcement behind the jump. But the stock climbed the ranks in Stocktwits, sitting at the top of its trending page. The reason appears to be a post on Reddit Inc.’s widely-followed WallStreetBets — which was later removed — that implored its members to “save Wendy’s before it’s too late.” The burger chain fits the profile of those that day traders like to rally around now and again. Its stock had tumbled over 70% since mid-2023.

Short sellers have piled in, dumping borrowed stock, making it vulnerable to a price spike if they can’t find shares when they need to close out their bearish bets. And it has solid nostalgia appeal, best known to Gen-Xers for its “Where’s the Beef” television ads in the 1980s. The WallStreetBets page of Reddit has sparked bouts of meme stocks mania in recent years as day traders regularly look for the next target. Last year, Doughnut maker Krispy Kreme Inc. and tech-powered home flipper Opendoor Technologies saw their stocks surge as retail investors piled in. Wendy’s is in the middle of a turnaround it seeks to improve sales.

On Tuesday, Wendy’s appointed Steve Cirulis as its new chief financial officer, replacing Ken Cook, who will remain in an advisory position through July.

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6. Candidates Endorsed by Zohran Mamdani Sweep New York Democratic Congressional Primaries

Three candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani swept to victory in Democratic congressional primaries on Tuesday, showing that the coalition which powered the New York City mayor to a surprising victory last year is gaining strength. Some of the city’s most established political figures were toppled in races that highlighted divisions within the party over ideology, Israel and immigration. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated two-term Representative Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional district, while New York state lawmaker Claire Valdez won in the 7th district in Queens and Brooklyn.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and graduate student, defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary in the 13th Congressional District. Tuesday’s Congressional primaries were viewed as a test of the political strength of Mamdani, who has been in office less than a year but is already trying to reshape New York’s Democratic power structures.

In stepping in to key races to back candidates who shared his views, he strained ties with other longstanding Democratic leaders.

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7. Blackstone Loan on Chicago Office Tower Defaults

Pacific Investment Management Co. is warning that the “credit loss cycle is upon us” as heavy spending on artificial intelligence could widen economic outcomes and hit lower-quality borrowers. Pimco’s Richard Clarida, Andrew Balls and Daniel Ivascyn said in the firm’s latest annual secular outlook report that “the default cycle is reasserting itself, and we expect significantly higher losses in lower-quality credit such as leveraged and private direct lending.” Pimco, which manages $2.3 trillion in assets, said the AI buildout could widen the range of economic outcomes over the next five years while leaving weaker and more heavily leveraged borrowers exposed. High-grade credit spreads — the extra yield investors demand over US Treasuries to hold highly rated corporate debt — remain near their lowest levels in almost three decades. Demand for riskier debt has also held up despite a recent global bond selloff, as higher yields draw buyers.

Pimco said that backdrop clashes with “elevated secular uncertainty,” and “we interpret this as complacency rather than strength.” While the US economy has been resilient, “AI will disrupt old economy companies, especially highly levered ones.” The firm also pointed to “increased instances of maturity extensions and payment-in-kind structures that allow borrowers to repay debt with more debt,” a trend it said suggests “a more genuine default cycle is now unfolding, and investors should not expect past patterns of rapid recovery to repeat with the same reliability.” Pimco said one effect of the AI boom could be lower wage pressure and higher productivity, which it described as “a powerful disinflationary force, but geopolitical shocks and supply chain reconfiguration will likely put upward pressure on prices.”

Against that backdrop, Pimco said “central banks will do what it takes to keep inflation expectations anchored over the next five years,” and that “for this reason, sovereign bonds offer income plus the potential for capital gains in a future downturn.”

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