In 30 seconds: A series of May employment reports showed resilient but uneven labor market conditions, with ADP private payrolls beating estimates, ISM Services employment softening, job openings ticking up, and women now holding a slight majority of nonfarm payroll jobs since Trump's return to office. The S&P 500 extended remarkable winning streaks—up nine consecutive weeks and days—while analysts debate the secular bull market's origins, breadth concerns, and the dominance of Tech and Communication Services, even as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF crossed $1 trillion in assets. Leveraged semiconductor ETFs and the broader chip sector have posted extraordinary gains in 2025, with the 3x Semiconductor ETF up 1,550% over the past year, prompting comparisons to the dot-com bubble and warnings of mania-level speculation. The US proposed new 10-12.5% tariffs on imports from 60 trading partners under a forced-labor Section 301 investigation, while the effective US tariff rate remains near 10% and transportation prices hit record highs amid ongoing trade policy uncertainty.
The May ISM Services PMI printed at 54.5, beating the 53.8 estimate and marking a three-month high. New orders surged to 57.3. So far, so good. May ISM Services employment: 47.9. ISM Services prices-paid component: 71.3. On the private payrolls side, May ADP private employment came in at 122,000, narrowly topping the 120,000 estimate. Supporting that view: April job openings ticked back up to 1.03 per unemployed worker, crossing above parity for the first time since June 2024. The metro-level picture is where the unevenness really shows. San Francisco remains 3.8% below its pre-pandemic job level. Over the past year, only 29 of the top 50 metros added jobs, while DC shed 2.9%.
The S&P 500 strung together nine consecutive positive weeks and nine consecutive positive sessions. It closed 0.74% lower on 2026-06-03 at 7,553.68, which counts as a minor interruption at best. The cyclical bull market that began on 2022-10-13 is now 45 months old, well past the 30 months median for cyclical bulls, and has delivered a 118% return, placing it among the strongest bulls, top four since 1960. There's a genuine debate about when the current secular bull market began — some technicians put the start in 2013, when the S&P 500 finally surpassed its 2007 high after a lost decade, while others point to 2009 based on trend deviation against the 150-year central trendline and the 10-year CAGR. The problem, if you want to call it that, is breadth. Tech and Communication Services have been the best performing sectors since the start of the bull market (10/12/2022) and the only two to outperform the S&P 500. Health Care has been the worst performing sector since the start of the bull market, yet it is still up 20%. Within the mega caps, the Magnificent Seven's performance presents a very different picture than 2023-2024. VOO, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, surpassed $1 trillion in assets, becoming the first ETF to hit that milestone. You can see how this loop feeds itself.
Semiconductor stocks have more than doubled on the year — and it is only June 3. The leveraged corner of the trade is where things get truly unhinged. The 3x Semiconductor ETF ($SOXL) is up 1,550% over the last year, a number that looks less like a return and more like a misplaced decimal in a pitch deck. Beneath the headline euphoria, the internals are getting strange. The SOX rallied 1% while the Nasdaq declined 1% on the same day — potentially the first such divergence in over five years, dating back to January 2021. Nvidia has moved in the opposite direction as the Semiconductor sector more often over the last month than any other period since the bull market started. When a major component starts decorrelating from the sector itself, the market is trying to decide whether this is a broad thesis or a single-stock story. Valuation multiples have also expanded sharply: the S&P Tech sector's trailing 12-month P/E has risen from roughly 32 to 48 since the March 30 low. The fire is hot. The gasoline is flowing. The only question is whether you are warming your hands or standing too close.
The US has proposed new 10-12.5% tariffs on imports from 60 trading partners following a Section 301 investigation into how trade partners handle goods allegedly produced by forced labor. If you squint at the structure, the forced labor framing starts to look like scaffolding for something more familiar. Expiring Section 122 tariffs will be largely replaced by Section 301 measures that keep the effective rate near 10%. The tariff rate, in other words, is a constant searching for a justification. That novelty comes with legal risk: proving a real burden on US commerce commensurate with the tariff could be a challenge. That is a lot of analytical weight to put on a theory that conveniently produces the round number you wanted in the first place. Meanwhile, the real economy is already registering the strain. Transportation prices in the May Logistics Managers Index hit 96, rising 1 point to the fastest rate of expansion ever recorded for any metric.
Here is what your portfolio did this session.
S&P 500: 7,553.68, down 0.74% on the day
10-Year Treasury yield: 4.49%, up 4 bp on the day
30-Year Treasury yield: 4.99%, up 2 bp on the day
13-Week T-Bill yield: 3.62%, up 0 bp on the day
Gold: $4,470.00, down 0.43% on the day
Fed funds rate: 3.75%, flat 0.00% on the day
Long bonds (TLT): $85.31, down 0.40% on the day