☕️ US inflation cools to 3.5% as gas prices tumble

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

📉 US inflation cools to 3.5% as gas prices tumble

🇨🇳 China posts slowest growth since 2022 as investment slumps

🛢️ Oil tops $86 as US strikes Iran again

💳 Stripe and Advent bid $53B for PayPal

💻 IBM's profit and revenue miss expectations

Plus: 🌍 8 macro news, 🏢 10 corporate news, 💰 6 deal flow, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

📰 Top News

• US inflation slowed to 3.5% in June from May's 4.2%, as consumer prices fell 0.4% over the month — the steepest monthly drop since April 2020 — driven by tumbling gasoline prices, sending stock futures higher.
• Falling energy costs powered the cooldown, with the energy category dropping 5.7% and gasoline specifically down 9.7%, helped by a brief ceasefire in the Iran conflict that has since broken down, threatening to reverse the relief.
• Core inflation, stripping out food and energy, eased to 2.6% annually from 2.9%, below the 2.8% forecast, giving the Fed room to hold policy steady while it watches whether renewed Middle East tension pushes prices back up.

• China's economy grew 4.3% in the second quarter, its weakest pace since late 2022, missing the 4.5% economists expected and slowing from 5% in the first quarter as investment slumped and consumer spending stayed weak.
• Urban fixed-asset investment, covering real estate and infrastructure, fell 5.7% in the first half from a year earlier, worse than the 4.9% drop forecast, as local governments diverted money to debt cleanup and ran short of viable projects.
• With growth below Beijing's 4.5%-to-5% target, economists at the Economist Intelligence Unit expect stronger stimulus in the third quarter, including an interest-rate cut, even as June industrial output rose 5.3% and retail sales edged up 1%.

• Crude climbed after renewed U.S. military strikes on Iran, with Brent up 1.23% to $85.77 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate rising 1.01% to $80.14, as Washington reimposed a naval blockade near the Strait of Hormuz.
• The overnight seven-hour operation, involving aircraft, drones and warships, hit Iranian missile, drone and coastal defense sites, with U.S. Central Command saying the aim was to weaken Tehran's ability to threaten commercial shipping through the vital oil chokepoint.
• Analyst Saul Kavonic said hopes for a quick reopening of the Strait were premature, warning oil could retest $100 a barrel if the current intensity persists for weeks, or climb higher still if regional oil infrastructure is targeted.

• Payments company Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International have offered $60.50 a share to buy PayPal, valuing it above $53 billion and marking a 28% premium to the stock's Tuesday close of $47.37.
• The pair secured roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing and would each take an equal stake, but PayPal has not responded and people familiar with the talks cautioned that no deal is certain.
• PayPal, once worth about $360 billion in 2021, has lost ground to Apple Pay, Google Pay and others, though its first-quarter revenue still rose 7% to $8.35 billion on roughly $464 billion in payment volume.

• IBM shares dropped more than 23% at Tuesday's open — shaping up to be its worst day in decades — after quarterly profit of $2.93 per share and $17.2 billion in revenue missed Wall Street's $3.01 and $17.86 billion forecasts.
• CEO Arvind Krishna blamed weakness in the Z mainframe business, saying clients in late June shifted spending toward servers, storage and memory to lock in supply ahead of expected price increases, denting sales of the associated software.
• The warning rippled across tech, dragging down software names including ServiceNow, Salesforce and Microsoft, and raising broader questions about whether companies are seeing enough near-term returns from their artificial intelligence spending.

🌍 Macro News

• OPEC cut its 2026 oil demand growth forecast for a third straight time, citing the Iran war. LINK
• US and UK unveiled a joint plan to align tokenized finance rules across both markets. LINK
• ECB picked 36 banks and payment firms to pilot a digital euro from 2027. LINK
• US trade chief Greer rejected EU efforts to regulate American tech companies globally. LINK
• US refunded $81 billion in tariffs this year after a supreme court ruling. LINK
• New Senate bill would tariff countries buying Russian oil, targeting China and India. LINK
• EU imported record LNG volumes from Russia's Yamal facility in early 2026. LINK
• BoE's Bailey called Britain's 16-year growth stagnation the country's core structural problem. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• ASML raised its 2026 sales forecast again on booming AI chip demand. LINK
• Uber shares fell on reports it may buy Delivery Hero this week. LINK
• DeepSeek is raising new funding targeting a roughly $70 billion valuation. LINK
• Top five US banks posted record combined $49 billion second-quarter profit. LINK
• Paramount Skydance reaffirmed plans to complete its Warner Bros takeover. LINK
• CleanSpark signed a $6.6 billion, 20-year data center lease in Georgia. LINK
• Lucid shares plunged on bankruptcy and going-private reports, which it denied. LINK
• Only a small number of Nvidia H200 chips have reached China, official says. LINK
• Meta faces a lawsuit alleging AI-driven layoffs discriminated against disabled and pregnant staff. LINK
• ChangXin Memory priced an $8.5 billion Shanghai IPO, China's largest chip listing. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Goldman economist warns AI's economic payoff may take years to materialize. LINK
• Morgan Stanley warns local opposition to data centers threatens the AI capex cycle. LINK
• Bank of America warns of a possible stock market shock resembling dot-com era patterns. LINK
• Fed's Barr says AI's impact on living standards and inequality remains uncertain. LINK
• Fed's Bowman urged banks to innovate responsibly with AI to boost financial inclusion. LINK
• Wall Street banks expect an AI-driven super cycle to boost dealmaking fees. LINK

💰 Deal Flow

• Reflection AI signed a $1 billion computing deal with Nebius. LINK
• Zuckerberg and Chan backed Neko Health's $700 million funding round. LINK
• Flex doubled its valuation to $1.2 billion after a $70 million funding round. LINK
• Velocity raised $38 million to expand its stablecoin payments platform. LINK
• Nous Research is nearing a funding round valuing it at $1.5 billion. LINK
• Mitsubishi closed its largest-ever deal, buying Aethon Energy's US gas assets for $7.5 billion. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

💬 How did you find today's edition?

We read every reply — just reply to this email and let us know how we can improve!