Inflation finally broke the market's way. June CPI cooled hard to 3.5%, the biggest monthly drop in six years, gutting July hike odds and sending chips flying. But it was a split tape: JPMorgan and Goldman printed records, while IBM had its worst day since 1987. And SK Hynix's US shares went vertical. Let's dig in 👇

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — CPI Relief, Records and a Wreck

🔑 Key Event: Cooling inflation drove a rotation back into risk. 📈 S&P 500 +0.38% to 7,544, Nasdaq +0.9% to 26,107, Dow +0.02% (held back by IBM). June CPI fell 0.4% on the month to 3.5% YoY (vs 3.8% expected, down from 4.2%), the biggest monthly drop since 2020, with core easing to 2.6%. July rate-hike odds collapsed to 17% from 42%, and semis led the relief rally.

👀 Other to Watch

• Banks split → JPMorgan net income jumped 41% to a record ~$21B (boosted by a one-off $4.6B Visa gain; adjusted EPS $6.14 still beat); Goldman Sachs posted its best quarter ever (EPS ~$21, revenue +39%) and rose ~9%. Citi gave back early gains to close down ~5%.
• IBM (IBM) -25% → its worst day on record (surpassing the 1987 crash). Q2 revenue ($17.2B) missed; the CEO blamed a late-June client budget shift into supply-constrained servers, storage and memory. That tell matters for the whole hardware trade.
• SK Hynix (SKHY) +27% → its US ADRs went vertical as options began trading, pushing the premium over Seoul shares to ~51%, helped by a Barclays Overweight and 12-layer HBM4 mass production.
• Memory + Nvidia → Micron and SanDisk rose 5%+; Nvidia (NVDA) +4% after the US granted H200 export licenses to a small set of Chinese firms (ZTE Kangxun, server maker Maginfra, plus a Kingsoft Cloud unit cleared for AMD), though officials say actual shipments so far are "trivial."

@CLuo : "WDC is pulling back as investors lock in profits after a strong AI-driven rally. The selloff looks more like a valuation reset than a sudden change in fundamentals. I remain positive on long-term enterprise HDD demand."

@NewUser_zS0M8w : "Super Micro has fallen about 44% over the past year on dilution and regulatory concerns. Citi's Asiya Merchant raised her SMCI target to $33, citing long-term demand for AI infrastructure."

🇭🇰 HK/China — Trade Beat Lifts HK

🔑 Key Event:HSI +0.52% to 24,341, recovering from an early dip below 24,000 after China's June trade data beat on both exports and imports. The Nvidia H200 export approvals are a direct tailwind for the big China cloud names.

👀 Other to Watch

• CXMT (ChangXin Memory) → opens subscription July 16 for a $4.3B Shanghai STAR IPO, the largest-ever on the board; Alibaba Cloud is a strategic investor.

🇸🇬 Singapore — Economy Beats, Manufacturing on Fire

🔑 Key Event: Singapore's Q2 GDP grew 5.7% YoY (advance estimate), easing from 6.3% in Q1 but beating the 5.5% forecast. Manufacturing led with +12.2%, powered by electronics and precision engineering on AI-chip demand. MTI kept its 2-4% full-year forecast but flagged rising downside risks from the Iran conflict.

👀 Other to Watch

• STI closed at a record 5,493 (+0.42%), an eighth straight winning session, with the AI-manufacturing story now showing up directly in the national GDP print.

🌍 Other

• 🛢️ Oil & Hormuz → WTI settled +1.5% at $79.34 and Brent +1.7% at $84.73 (touching $87 intraday) as the US kept striking Iran, but Trump dropped his proposed 20% Hormuz transit fee, saying Gulf states will invest in the US instead.
• 🥇 Gold → firmed as the cool CPI pulled Treasury yields down and eased the rate-hike pressure that has weighed on it all year.

📅 Key Events Tonight / This Week

• 🇺🇸 June PPI · today (Wed Jul 15)
• 🇺🇸 Fed Chair Warsh Senate testimony (day 2) · today Jul 15
• 🇳🇱 ASML Q2 earnings · today Jul 15
• 🇨🇳 TSMC Q2 earnings · Thu Jul 16
• 🇸🇬 Longbridge AI conference + Jensen Huang in Tokyo · today Jul 15

💬 IBM just had its worst day ever because clients yanked budgets from software and mainframes to grab scarce memory and servers. Is that a one-off stumble, or the clearest sign yet that AI spending is rotating from software into hardware?

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🚫 No duplicates · ⏰ Deadline: July 15, 2026, 11:59 PM SGT

Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏