WSJ What’s News - The Housing Market Slumped This Spring. Where Does It Go From Here?

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

P.M. Edition for June 23. Mortgage rates dipped below 6% in February, but geopolitical tensions and a hawkish Federal Reserve have sent rates back up. Journal reporter Nicole Friedman discusses what that means for the rest of 2026, and how the housing market could bounce back from a slump this spring. Plus, the Trump administration is pushing for a nuclear power renaissance. The Energy Department is making $17.5 billion in low-interest loans available to help finance the construction of nuclear reactors. We hear from Jennifer Hiller, who covers the power industry for WSJ, about how the program would work. And the tech selloff deepened today, with the Nasdaq dropping 2.2%. WSJ markets reporter David Uberti walks us through what’s driving the dip. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Searching for a home, the real commute tool from Realtor.com, lets you find homes right where you need to be. Find a home 10 minutes from work, 15 from school, and 20 from grandmas. With over half a million new listings every month, you're just minutes from finding your perfect home on Realtor.com. Trust the number one site Real Estate Professionals Trust. Search now on Realtor.com. Based on average new for sale and rental listings July 24 through June 2025.

Number one trusted based on August 2025 proprietary survey among real estate professionals. The AI rally that boosted tech stocks has turned into a sell-off. Is it time to be worried yet? These stocks have had such an incredible run that even while these sort of daily declines seem big and are evaporating a lot of value for investors, it's really kind of a blip. Plus, a late winter drop in mortgage rates wasn't enough to save the spring home buying season. We get into what it would take for the housing market to bounce back. And move-over detergent pods, the company behind Tide now wants you to wash your clothes with tiles?

It's Tuesday, June 23rd. I'm Alex O'Slev for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The tech sell-off that has been rippling around the world deepened today. The NASDAQ dropped 2.2%. Intel, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla all fell 4% or more, following steep losses in big tech stocks yesterday. The S&P and Dow had smaller losses falling about 1.4% and 0.1%. For more on what's driving stocks lower, I'm joined by WSJ Markets reporter David Uberti.

David, why are tech stocks hurting in particular? One of the big catalysts that investors are citing is the expectation for higher interest rates from the U.S. Federal Reserve, the new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, last week, in his first. first appearances chair was unexpectedly hawkish in his commentary, basically suggesting that the U.S. Fed might actually keep rate steady, if not raise them in response to above target inflation. And due to the fact that many of these tech names that we follow every day are increasingly issuing debt in order to build out data centers fund all their computing operations, the higher interest rates could really impact their operations in a really big way and ultimately impact how

profitable those companies are in the years ahead. Some of the companies hit hardest today, Micron and SpaceX, why those in particular? SpaceX has been continuing its pullback since this post-IPO pop. At one point today, shares were actually trading below where they were initially issued during the IPO. Stocks like that are inherently volatile, and SpaceX just has a tremendous valuation vis-a-vis what its actual business fundamentals are. Micron and Sandisk were the two largest losers in the S&P 500 today. Despite its declines today, Sandusk is still up 4,000% over the last 12 months. Micron, which is worth more than a trillion dollars, is still up 700% over the last

12 months or so. So that just sort of goes to show that these stocks have had such an incredible run that even while these sort of daily declines seem big and are evaporating a lot of value for investors, it's really kind of a blip. And the big question is whether that will continue whether these AI jitters are sort of emblematic of something to come, or whether this is just one of those momentary pullbacks, whether firms on Wall Street are shifting to dials and their investment strategies somewhat. That was WSJ Markets reporter, David Uberti. Thanks, David.

Thanks. Meanwhile, oil prices are falling. Rent crude futures slipped more than 1 percent to $77 and $8 a barrel, the lowest settlement price since the day before the start of the war with Iran. In corporate news, the journal has learned that Walmart is buying. buying a French advertising technology firm for $1.4 billion. Buying Vibe.com, which enables advertising through connected TVs, is Walmart's biggest deal in two years,

and it's the company's latest investment in its efforts to compete with Amazon for new advertising revenue streams. The crucial spring home buying season is over, and it was a disappointment. Home sales have been holding at depressed levels, dashing hopes of a market rebound. Journal reporter Nicole Friedman, who joined us in the second episode of our housing series, this morning says that doesn't bode well for what's left of 2026.

The spring market is really crucial for the rest of the year. A lot of people want to move in the spring or move over the summer. And so if they miss that opportunity, they might delay it a whole year. And so some of the demand that didn't show up this spring won't necessarily come later in the year. We might have to wait until 2027. If conditions get better in the fall or even the winter, we see a decline in mortgage rates or a decline in home prices and increase in inventory.

There are definitely a lot of buyers that would jump on that, but it wouldn't be as big of a wave as we would have seen this spring if the conditions had been better. Factors like the Iran War and a hawkish Federal Reserve have sent mortgage rates even higher yesterday reaching 6.66%. But Nicole says that as some of that volatility settles down, where rates land could still make a difference for the housing market. The components of affordability are incomes, home prices, and mortgage rates.

And so mortgage rates coming down would make a huge difference. Also, home prices, which are still on a national basis ticking higher, you know, that could make the difference for some buyers. We are seeing income growth. And so slowly people's incomes are kind of over the years going to catch up with the change in housing affordability, but that's a very slow process. that's not something that is necessarily going to happen this year. And we'll be talking more about this topic on tomorrow afternoon's episode of What's News

as we continue our housing series with a look at the federal efforts to solve a housing crisis. Coming up, the Trump administration is betting big on nuclear energy. That's after the break. Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees that I don't really need it. Infliction is killing me. But who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durban Marshall credit card bill.

See, banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources they need. While increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they? Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores. Paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition. In Washington, the Senate voted to limit President Trump's ability to conduct military operations against Iran without congressional authorization. The resolution passed this afternoon in a 50 to 48 vote and directs the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities unless explicitly authorized by Congress, other than to defend America, an ally, or partner from, quote, imminent attack.

Four Republicans joined with Democrats in the non-binding vote. top-ranking Senate Democrats are calling for hearings into a secret $500 million investment into the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture from a group led by a senior Emirati royal. The deal was first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. And a letter addressed to the Republican committee chairs, the Democratic senators argued hearings on the deal would compel White House officials to explain what they knew about the payments and when. The lawmakers wrote that the investment raises, quote, questions about what more the UAE may receive or may have already received. at the expense of U.S. national security. A White House spokeswoman said that President Trump's businesses are held in a trust managed by his children. And the Supreme Court has ruled that a Rastafarian prisoner can't sue guards who violated his beliefs by forcibly shaving his head,

narrowing a federal law meant to protect religious rights in state prisons. The ruling was one of five decisions the High Court issued today as it races to wrap up its work before taking a summer recess, which typically happens in late June or early July. There are 12 cases still pending, all of them involving major issues such as birthright citizenship, presidential power, transgender athletes, and election law. The court's next scheduled day to issue decisions is Thursday. The Trump administration is eager to see a nuclear power renaissance, so eager, in fact, that it's putting up billions of dollars to make it happen. Today, the Energy Department announced that it's offering low-interest loans amounting to more than $17 billion to help utilities finance orders for nuclear reactors from the company Westinghouse. Jennifer Hiller, who covers the power industry for the journal, joins me now with more.

Jennifer, from what I understand the idea is that utilities are the ones who are taking out these loans. What is the goal of the program overall? When would it hope to get some nuclear reactors online? What it would do would be to go towards equipment orders. So things like heavy vessels and steam generators and things that take maybe three or four years to build, they would go ahead and start making those long lead items that you would need for a reactor. And the idea is that you shave a few years off and that you would start delivering big reactors around 2035. Why is the Trump administration starting this program now?

At this point, we have rising power demand, especially from things like, AI, so we need more base load power coming onto the grid, and nuclear is very reliable. And it is a technology that really needs a lot of government involvement because it's expensive and difficult and can take a while to build. Right. I mean, in the past, projects to build reactors have really struggled to get off the ground. Costs have spiraled out of control. I'm thinking specifically of two of these reactors in Georgia that were supposed to cost $14 billion, but they ended up costing $30, so more than $10.00.000. double. So is $17.5 billion that the Trump administration is allocating for this enough to

really make a difference? It's enough to get equipment orders made. So it's not for construction. You know, essentially, this gets the supply chain moving because there would be orders of identical equipment, all of the factories would have kind of this reliable series of orders. Westinghouse and its suppliers can guarantee sort of a price. And that would be one way to help control costs. So it isn't a complete solution, but it's saying we are going to start working on the parts and pieces that go into the reactor that take a long time to build.

And we're going to go ahead and do that while we figure the rest of this stuff out. That was journal reporter, Jennifer Hiller. Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you. Finally, your detergent is being disrupted. Procter & Gamble, which controls about 60% of the U.S. laundry detergent market, is rolling out its latest concoction, a tile called TideEvo. It took more than a decade to develop and costs almost twice as much as a tub of its previous laundry innovation, Tidepods. Journal reporter Natasha Khan recently visited the company's R&D facility in Ohio, and she said there's a good reason why they started working on this new detergent shortly after Tidepods were introduced in 2012.

One of the things that Victor Aguilar, who is in charge of P&G's $2 billion annual R&D budget and I were speaking about, is that consumer products really evolve on an S curve. So there's a cycle of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. So according to him, many products peak at about 14 years. So for them, it's really important to keep coming up with innovations for the market, even when existing products are selling well. So actually, the development of these Tide tiles, which took about 10 years, to make. They really started that process very soon after pods were first launched to the market.

Natasha says the company designed the Evo tiles with some different factors in mind. PNG, they invests a lot in observing consumers, in understanding consumers. And there were a few things that they identified as maybe the trends that we'll be seeing now. It's interesting because they were predicting this in the early 2010s. And it's things like F leisure wear and synthetic fibers being a lot more popular. It's things like, you know, maybe with energy, being on the rise, Americans would prefer to have a solution where they can wash their clothes in cold water. So these are things that they would observe and they come up with this. So what's your laundry hot take? Do you get down with pods? Cold water only? Is fabric softener

a scam? We want to know. If you're a listener on Spotify, leave us a comment with your thoughts. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansy with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. I'm Alex Oslo for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. Enterprises are already creating efficiencies with agendic AI, particularly in areas like finance, HR, and IT,

says Jason Gersadis, CEO of Deloitte US. Those will continue to proliferate and strengthen. And it'll change the work that gets done. and work will increasingly be delivered through agenetic capabilities. Garzadas believes the most transformative impacts of agentic systems are still to come. It will fuel innovation. It will fuel the pivot into market creation, market diversification, strategies that will open up new markets to clients and to organizations who are looking for growth and looking for differentiated access to new markets, which I think is the most exciting thing.

Visit Deloitte.com to learn how your enterprise can help successfully leverage Agentic AI. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes. Custom content from WSJ is a unit of the Wall Street Journal advertising department. The Wall Street Journal News Organization was not involved in the creation of this content.