Nice tidy CPI print this morning: 3.5%, cooler than expected, first monthly decline since 2020. And it landed on the same day oil broke back above $85 because the Hormuz ceasefire fractured overnight. The report is a photograph of June. The world it’s describing had already moved on by the time anyone read it. I keep noticing this about monthly data during a live conflict: it’s honest about a past that’s stopped existing, and everyone treats it like forward guidance anyway.

But the more interesting split today is JPMorgan versus IBM. JPMorgan just posted the largest quarterly profit in US banking history, riding trading volatility from the Iran conflict and fee income from the SpaceX IPO (the setup I flagged a couple days ago, paying off right on schedule). Meanwhile IBM had its worst day since 1987, down more than 20%, because, in the company’s own words, “the AI boom is squeezing software budgets.”

Sit with that phrase for a second. Everyone talks about AI spending like it’s a rising tide, one number going up and lifting everything near it. But a tide doesn’t have an invoice. Companies are funding AI infrastructure by cutting license renewals somewhere else, and IBM’s stock just found out where “somewhere else” was. The money didn’t multiply. It moved from one line item to another, and whoever was standing in the old line item took the hit.

I read a company blaming AI for shrinking its own budget and had to sit with that one a minute too.

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