The Market Almost Broke. Then It Didn't.

This past week was a gut-check for the bulls — and they passed. Barely.

The S&P 500 opened the week under real pressure. Oil was trading well above $100 a barrel. The 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007 on Tuesday, according to CNBC. Stocks hated both of those things, as they should. Higher yields make equities less attractive on a relative basis. Higher oil is a tax on everything.

The index logged a three-session losing streak dating back to May 15 — the worst skid since late March. It wasn't catastrophic, but it was a reminder that this rally is not immune to macro gravity.

What Turned It Around

Wednesday flipped the script. Oil pulled back. Bond yields retreated. And President Donald Trump told reporters the U.S. was in the "final stages" of peace negotiations with Iran, according to CNBC.

That was enough. Stocks rallied Wednesday, kept going Thursday and Friday, and the S&P 500 finished the week up 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.1% and closed at a record high. The Nasdaq added 0.5%.

The S&P 500 now sits less than 0.4% below its May 14 record close of 7,501. Eight straight weeks of gains. The longest winning streak since late 2023.

Nvidia Beat Wall Street — And Got Punished for It

Nvidia delivered a beat-and-raise quarter that was "well above analyst forecasts," according to CNBC. CEO Jensen Huang said "demand has gone parabolic." That's not marketing language — that's a supply chain warning wrapped in a victory lap.

The stock dropped 2.6% the next session and another 0.5% on Friday.

A blow-out quarter. Stock goes down. The market is priced for perfection on AI names, and even perfection isn't enough anymore. CNBC's investment club raised its price target to $260 from $230 — but the tape told a different story.

SpaceX Files for the Biggest IPO in History

Buried under the Iran and Nvidia headlines: SpaceX filed for its initial public offering on Wednesday. According to CNBC, it is expected to be the largest IPO in history. That's a generational market event that got roughly 10% of the coverage it deserved because everyone was watching Nvidia.

Berkshire's Abel Makes His First Controversial Calls

New Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel's first major portfolio update revealed in last Friday's Q1 13F SEC filing raised eyebrows across Wall Street.

Two new names appeared in the portfolio: Delta Air Lines and Macy's. Both are head-scratchers.

The Delta position clocks in at $2.6 billion as of March 31, according to CNBC's Warren Buffett Watch newsletter. Warren Buffett — who famously joked a "farsighted capitalist" should have shot down Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk — told The Wall Street Journal directly that he was NOT involved in the Delta decision. That's Buffett publicly distancing himself from his successor's first major buy.

Barron's analyst Andrew Bary thinks the Delta stake was likely initiated by Ted Weschler, Berkshire's remaining portfolio manager, noting the $2.6 billion figure "exactly matches" Weschler's expanded ~$3 billion authority. The Motley Fool's Geoffrey Seiler was blunter, saying Abel appears to be "repeating Buffett's mistakes."

The portfolio also shrank dramatically — a "large reduction" in the number of stocks, consistent with The Wall Street Journal's earlier reporting that Abel planned to sell many positions formerly managed by Todd Combs, who departed for JPMorgan late last year.

Buffett is still showing up to the office five days a week as chairman and told CNBC's Becky Quick in late March he's still making investment calls — but won't override Abel. Translation: the old guard is watching, not driving.

The Historical Warning Nobody Wants to Hear

The eight-week streak deserves context from the historical record.

SimCorp Managing Director Melissa Brown cited SBBI data to CNBC showing the market has now posted annualized returns of 26% in 2023, 25% in 2024, and roughly 18% in 2025. Only three times since 1926 has the market posted four straight years of 15%-plus returns. The S&P 500 is up about 8% year-to-date in 2026.

"Things just can't grow forever," Brown told CNBC. "We're clearly closer to the end of the rally than the beginning."

The historical average return in the fourth year following a three-year annualized gain of 20%-plus: 3.9%. Against a long-run average of 11.8%. That's a brutal gap.

Brown isn't calling a crash. She's calling a ceiling. A full-year return above 10% in 2026 would be, in her words, "extremely unusual."

Bank of America analysts are still finding individual stock opportunities — they're bullish on Visa, Citigroup, United Rentals (up nearly 16% this year), Sprouts Farmers Market, and Zeta Global (up more than 40% over the past 12 months), according to CNBC. Stock-picking matters more when index-level returns compress.

What This Means for Regular People

Your 401(k) had a great three years. History says the next year probably won't match it — not because something breaks, but because math has limits.

The big swing factors from here: whether Trump's Iran deal actually closes, whether the SpaceX IPO sucks capital out of other positions, and whether AI stocks can keep justifying their valuations when even Nvidia's best quarter in years can't hold its share price up.

Eight straight weeks up is a streak worth celebrating.