Wall Street is treading water near record highs as hawkish Fed minutes cap enthusiasm ahead of SK Hynix’s blockbuster Nasdaq debut, while a surprise crude inventory build sends oil sharply lower and a stronger Canadian jobs report drives USD/CAD to a two-week low.

Friday’s U.S. session has settled into a narrow, event-driven range as investors weigh the tail end of a strong week for equities against a hawkish policy signal from the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 is little-changed near 7,555.90 by late morning, having closed Thursday up 0.81% at 7,543.64 on the back of a semiconductor-led rally and a pullback in oil prices, a move that puts the benchmark within reach of its all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is firmer still, up around 0.25% near 52,620 after Thursday’s 139-point advance, while the Nasdaq Composite is roughly flat, pausing after Thursday’s 1.3% surge to 26,206.89 as chip stocks take a breather. The session’s central event remains SK Hynix’s Nasdaq American Depositary Receipt listing — the largest-ever U.S. share sale by a foreign company at $26.5 billion, more than seven times oversubscribed, and indicated to open as much as 21% above its $149 offering price — widely viewed by traders as a live referendum on the durability of the AI infrastructure trade. Elsewhere in tech, Micron Technology has lifted its planned U.S. investment through 2035 to more than $250 billion, up from $200 billion in June, alongside a $3 billion silicon-wafer supply deal with GlobalWafers, while Meta Platforms has outlined plans to begin manufacturing its own customized AI chip from September.

Rates markets remain the session’s undercurrent. Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June 16-17 meeting, released Wednesday, showed the Committee voting unanimously, 12-0, to hold the federal funds rate at 3.50%-3.75% while dropping language that had previously suggested a bias toward easing; several participants said they saw a case for raising rates given inflation risks that remain tilted to the upside, and the median dot in the accompanying projections was lifted to 3.8% for end-2026 from 3.4% previously. That hawkish repricing pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to a seven-week high near 4.58% on Thursday; it has eased back to around 4.54% on Friday as softer oil prices take some pressure off near-term inflation expectations, while the 20-year sector holds near 5.02%, down from a multi-month high closer to 5.06% earlier this week. New York Fed President John Williams said Friday that, among the factors driving U.S. inflation, he is most focused on demand fueled by artificial-intelligence investment, while newly installed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has announced the leadership of five internal task forces to review the central bank’s policymaking approach. Markets continue to price roughly a 79% probability that the Fed holds rates steady at its July 28-29 meeting, with attention increasingly turning to next Tuesday’s June CPI report.

Commodities have delivered the session’s sharpest reversal. WTI crude has slid to around $71.02 a barrel, down from an early print near $74.69, after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a surprise roughly 3-million-barrel build in commercial crude inventories for the week ended July 4 — the first weekly stockpile increase since April, against consensus expectations for a drawdown of one to nearly two million barrels. The build has snapped a two-session, Iran-driven rally that had carried WTI more than 4% higher earlier in the week on fears that renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities near the Strait of Hormuz could disrupt regional supply; vessel-tracking data continues to show reduced but still-meaningful transit volumes through the strait. Gold, which opened 1.2% higher at $4,135.40 on Friday after a volatile week of Iran-driven swings, has eased back to around $4,113 by mid-morning as the softer oil backdrop tempers some safe-haven demand, even as HSBC trimmed its average 2026 gold forecast to $4,560 from $4,864 citing the same dynamic.

Currency markets are dominated by a stronger-than-expected Canadian jobs report. Statistics Canada reported that the economy added 18.2k jobs in June, comfortably above the 10k consensus, even as the pace moderated sharply from May’s 87.8k increase; the Unemployment Rate eased to 6.5% from 6.6%. The data pulled USD/CAD down to a more-than-two-week low near 1.4136 before the pair steadied around 1.4167, putting it on track for its first weekly loss in six weeks even as a broadly resilient U.S. Dollar, underpinned by Fed rate-hike expectations, continues to cap the Loonie’s advance; the Bank of Canada’s July 15 rate decision looms as the next major catalyst. USD/CHF, by contrast, is consolidating near 0.8062 after bouncing smartly off support at 0.8030, with the pair still capped below resistance at 0.8100 and the broader U.S. Dollar Index little-changed around 100.86-100.90. In digital assets, Bitcoin has advanced to around $64,004.90, up roughly 1.5% on the day, as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs snapped a ten-day outflow streak with a $221.7 million inflow — their largest daily haul in two months — while XRP has broken decisively above the closely watched $1.10 resistance level on a late volume spike to touch an intraday high of $1.1065, holding near session highs rather than giving back the move. Looking ahead through the remainder of the U.S. session, the decisive variables are SK Hynix’s actual opening print on the Nasdaq, any further headlines on the fragile US-Iran de-escalation, and early positioning ahead of next week’s CPI release.