Nasdaq slips 1.6% as AAPL rallies 4.8%, AI chip bets diverge

The Nasdaq 100 closed the week at 712.60, down 1.59%, a clear laggard against a cross-asset backdrop that favored hard assets and crypto. Gold added 3.94% and Bitcoin rose 3.74%, while the S&P 500 managed a 0.51% gain. The index was dragged lower by a rotation out of momentum names, a theme visible in the Alpha Score breakdowns for several mega-caps.

Apple was the session's outlier, jumping 4.84% to $308.63. The move lacked a single obvious catalyst in the supplied data, but it arrived alongside a new political disclosure. Rep. Gilbert Cisneros (D-CA) reported a purchase of Apple shares on June 5, a transaction made public this week. Microsoft added 1.62%, a quieter gain that followed news of a major Copilot app consolidation aimed at boosting adoption.

The AI chip trade, the engine of the Nasdaq's run, showed cracks. Nvidia fell 1.39% on the session. The Alpha Score for Nvidia sits at 68, a moderate reading, but the momentum component is flagged as weak. AMD, which backed Japanese startup Turing this week, carries an Alpha Score of 55 with weak sentiment and poor value. The Groq founder's admission that poor leadership cost the company years added a layer of narrative risk to the challenger chip story.

The session's price action was concentrated in a few names, with the broader index's weekly decline pointing to steady, low-conviction selling rather than a single risk-off event. The Alpha Score data reinforces a value-over-momentum tilt.

• AAPL +4.84% on the session. The jump coincided with a disclosed purchase by Rep. Cisneros. Alpha Score 54, with strong momentum but poor value.
• MSFT +1.62% on the session. The company is merging its consumer and enterprise Copilot apps, cutting features to streamline the product. Alpha Score 56, with poor momentum and strong value.
• NVDA -1.39% on the session. Weak momentum flagged in its Alpha Score of 68. The broader AI chip narrative faced headwinds from the Groq founder's comments on leadership failures.
• QQQ -1.59% for the week. The tech-heavy index was the weakest major US equity benchmark, contrasting with gold and bitcoin's strong weekly gains.

The week's political trading disclosures were sparse but thematically tight. Rep. Gilbert Cisneros disclosed two purchases, both executed on June 5 and made public during this briefing period.

• AMD: Cisneros bought a position valued between $1,000 and $15,000. The trade lands just as AMD Ventures backs Turing, a Japanese self-driving startup that will use AMD accelerators. The Alpha Score of 55 is held back by poor value and weak sentiment.
• AAPL: Cisneros also bought Apple in the same size range. The purchase aligns with the stock's 4.84% session surge. Apple's Alpha Score of 54 is a split picture: strong momentum collides with a poor value reading.

The overlap between a congressional buyer and a session-leading gainer is the kind of compound signal that deserves attention. It does not, on its own, make a case, but it adds a layer of confirmed interest to a name that was already moving.

On the Alpha Score leaderboard, Alphabet stands alone at 77, the only name in the supplied set with a strong profile across all four factors: momentum, value, quality, and sentiment. That reading sits in contrast to Meta (58, poor momentum) and Microsoft (56, poor momentum), both of which carry strong value and quality scores but are struggling for price traction.