Friday's semicap rout reversed in full — KLA +12.0%, Applied Materials +10.8%, FormFactor +10.3% — as the Nasdaq rebounded 2.1%, while Cleveland-Cliffs fell 5.7% on steel-pricing pressure, the one compute chokepoint left behind.

KLA (KLAC) led the basket, up 12.0% to $278.39, the standout in a violent snapback across the lithography and process-control toolchain. There was no single-name catalyst; this was the mirror image of Friday's semicap rout, when fears over delayed AI capex hammered the entire equipment stack. With the Nasdaq rebounding 2.07% to 25,820.14 and the semiconductor complex (SMH) up roughly 3%, the names that fell hardest Friday led the recovery: Applied Materials (AMAT) +10.8%, Lam Research (LRCX) +8.4%, and FormFactor (FORM) +10.3%, the probe-card supplier that had been Friday's worst name. KLA owns the inspection-and-metrology bottleneck — the process-control gate every advanced wafer must pass — making it the cleanest barometer of whether the leading-edge buildout is intact. Monday said it is.

Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) was the laggard, down 5.7% to $9.38, and the divergence is instructive. On the power-grid chokepoint, Cliffs supplies grain-oriented electrical steel for the transformers that data centers depend on, but the stock trades on commodity steel pricing, not AI demand — and it continued lower on a recent analyst cut to US steel-price outlooks, a Morgan Stanley downgrade, and disclosed insider selling. While the rest of the power complex rose with the tape (GE Vernova +5.5%, Quanta +3.9%), Cliffs was the one compute name still discounting a cyclical, not a secular, story.

The recovery radiated across nearly every chokepoint. Optical interconnect rebounded — Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) +10.6%, Marvell (MRVL) +4.1%, Arista (ANET) +4.1%. HBM and advanced packaging firmed: Onto Innovation (ONTO) +8.5%, with TSMC (TSM) +5.3% and ASML (ASML) +4.9% on the foundry-and-lithography node. The accelerators-capex anchors were comparatively muted (NVIDIA +1.3%, Broadcom +2.0%, Amazon +3.2%), and Microsoft (MSFT) actually slipped 1.2%, giving back part of Friday's defensive-rotation pop, while Micron (MU) added just 1.1%. The soft spot was data-center power: Constellation (CEG −1.8%), Talen (TLN −1.2%) and Vistra (−0.7%) lagged even as the chips ripped — confirming the move was an equipment-led relief rally, not a fresh leg of the power thesis.

The calendar turns dense and policy-heavy this week. Commerce's Section 232 data-center-semiconductor report to the President is due around July 1, and PJM's 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction closes July 7 — a direct read on the data-center power premium that names like Talen trade on. The earnings wave then opens with ASML on July 15 and TSMC on July 16, the first hard reads on whether leading-edge tool and foundry demand matches Monday's optimism, followed by GE Vernova on July 22 for the grid-power side.