Top 10 Wall Street Events in 2025 (Below) June to December
Even in 2025, the U.S. stock market went through cycles of fear, greed, and joy. In conclusion, the S&P 500 index rose about 16% over the year, showing double-digit growth for three consecutive years.
However, the process was not smooth.
The S&P 500, which started at the 5800 level at the beginning of the year, fell to the 4800 level throughout the year and closed at the 6800 level at the end of the year. Maeil Business Newspaper has compiled 10 key events on Wall Street that made Seohak ants laugh and cry over the past year.
(This article continues from ‘Top 10 events on Wall Street in 2025 that made Seohak ants laugh and cry (Part 1)’)
‘Stablecoin’ circle’s spectacular stock market debut
June 5th.
Circle, which issues dollar-based stablecoin ‘USDC’, closed at a 168% surge compared to its initial public offering price on the first day of its listing on Nasdaq.
Since then, it has been trading at a price that is 864% higher than the public offering price, showing signs of a speculative frenzy.
It was evaluated as having secured stability by using U.S. Treasury bonds as a reserve asset, and optimism was in full bloom that it could bring about a payment network for traditional currencies.
Minister Bessent also said, “The stablecoin market capitalization could exceed $2 trillion in the future.”
Circle revitalized the somewhat sluggish U.S. initial public offering (IPO) market, and this enthusiasm led to interest in other IPO stocks such as Figma and Bullish.
However, as speculative demand decreased, the bubble in Circle’s stock price began to burst. Circle’s stock price has fallen to about a quarter of its all-time high.
‘AI Bubbleon’ launched by Sam Altman
August 15th.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman responded to the question, “Are investors overly excited about AI?” by saying, “Yes, a bubble is created when a part of the truth is completely inflated.”
This statement came at a time when the U.S. stock market had risen sharply following the ‘Taco Rally’ and there was great fatigue over profit-taking, causing a market shock.
In addition to this answer, CEO Altman also added that ‘AI is the most important thing in a long time,’ but the market paid attention to the remarks made by the head of the world’s top AI startup affirming the AI bubble theory.
Other celebrities’ remarks about ‘AI bubble’ and ‘stock market overvaluation’ also attracted investors’ attention.
On September 23, Chairman Powell diagnosed that the U.S. stock market was ‘significantly overvalued.’
![Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. [사진 = EPA연합뉴스]](https://i0.wp.com/pimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202601/01/news-p.v1.20251118.0434eb8aa3b64fbea16548013af06c3b_P1.jpg?w=1170&ssl=1)
On October 3, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “It is true that the AI bubble is an industrial bubble, but the technology itself is real.”
Through this process, news of Big Tech’s investment in AI began to be regarded as conditional bad news rather than unconditional good news.
In particular, as anxiety spread that Big Tech was incurring debt by issuing excessive corporate bonds, Big Tech Credit Default Swap (CDS) trading volume surged.
Controversy over Trump violating Federal Reserve independence
Donald Trump (left) and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell visited the U.S. Federal Reserve headquarters on the 24th (local time). [로이터 = 연합뉴스]”/> September 15th.
The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) made its first interest rate cut decision last year. The 4.25-4.5% rate that has been maintained since December 2024 was lowered to 4.00-4.25%.
In 2025, the Federal Reserve faced ongoing friction with the Trump administration.
While the Federal Reserve delayed lowering interest rates, saying it had to carefully consider the impact of tariffs on prices, President Trump frequently used the ‘fire card’ against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and pressured him to lower interest rates.
Even within the Federal Reserve, a division has emerged between hawks, who call for a freeze on interest rates due to concerns about a surge in prices, and doves, who call for a rate cut due to concerns about a slowdown in employment.
President Trump also fired director Lisa Cook, who is considered a hawk.
After the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates for the first time in nine months, an ‘everything rally’ appeared in the market for a while, with stock markets, raw materials, and coins all rising due to expectations of an explosion of liquidity.
The Federal Reserve also lowered the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points in October and December, lowering the current US benchmark interest rate to 3.50-3.75%.
From Open Door to Beyond Meat… ‘Meme stock’ craze
October 21st.
The stock price of Beyond Meat, a plant-based alternative meat processing company, soars 146% in one day.
As individual investors flocked to ‘meme stocks’, stock prices responded greatly to even small positive news.
From July to October 2025, the US stock market saw a ‘meme stock’ market for the first time since 2021.
It started with Opendoor, a real estate transaction platform.
Eric Jackson, who leads Canadian hedge fund EMJ Capital, rallied individual investors, saying that Opendoor’s stock price could rise more than 100 times in the future.
He did not hesitate to do things such as visit famous rapper Drake’s home and ask him to buy one share of Open Door stock.
Open Door shareholders who gathered together on social media platforms such as ‘Reddit’ and ‘
![EMJ Capital CEO Eric Jackson's Open Door purchase protest. [사진=에릭 잭슨 X]](https://i0.wp.com/pimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202601/01/news-p.v1.20250903.c459bf6baa024c209085a550b355a605_P1.png?w=1170&ssl=1)
As success stories like these emerge, investors who were initially wary of meme stocks also begin to make aggressive bets.
The meme stock exchange-traded fund (ETF), which was created during the GameStop incident, has also been revived.
However, investors who caught the ‘top’ of meme stocks when the bubble burst suffered severe losses.
According to NH Securities data, the proportion of domestic investors who lost money to Beyond Meat was 100%, and the average return was minus 76.3%.
‘The Last Short Doll’ Bury Turns to Blogger
November 4th.
It was revealed that Michael Burry, who gained fame for predicting the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, had bet on the decline of Nvidia and Palantir.
In the third quarter of 2025, he purchased put options on Nvidia and Palantir, leading stocks in the U.S. stock market, through Cyan Asset Management, which he leads. In the market, investors also appeared to buy along with the put options he purchased.
He emphasized, “Sometimes you see a bubble,” and “sometimes not participating is the only winning strategy.”
Burry was criticized for this by Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, calling him ‘crazy’.
Burry later revealed through X why he expected the U.S. stock market to collapse.
The current AI infrastructure (infrastructure) investment boom is that companies are engaging in unsustainable excessive capital expenditures (CapEx), similar to the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s or the US housing bubble in 2007.
In particular, it was pointed out that the financial structure of Open AI, which is at the center of AI capital expenditures, is unclear.
![Michael Burry. [사진=블룸버그]](https://i0.wp.com/pimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202601/01/news-p.v1.20251128.a31de4f3f6604aafb25cee13447f78b2_P1.png?w=1170&ssl=1)
Meanwhile, Cyan Management, which was at the center of controversy, was deregistered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There was speculation that Bury, who likes to bet on the downside, was affected by a decline in his asset size in the bull market that has continued for several years.
Instead, he expressed his opinion through the subscription blog platform Substack. He attracted about 180,000 subscribers in about a month after opening Substack. Among them, there is also a paid subscriber for $379 per year.
In this blog, Burry also mentioned that Lululemon, Molina Healthcare, Shift4 Payments, and Fannie Mae stocks are promising.
