Good Morning! IBM cratered 25%, its worst day on record, losing $69 billion in market value after warning that Q2 earnings fell short of expectations. Apollo is muscling in on Wall Street's turf with $300 billion in loans, competing directly with JPMorgan and Goldman for blue-chip deals. And the superrich are landsmaxxing, buying entire blocks at a time.

Fed Chair Warsh says the Fed has "no tolerance" for elevated inflation. A New York state bill may give shoppers a 10% discount for using self-checkout. And Buffett plans to offload his Berkshire stake within eight years, with Gates’ Foundation notably snubbed.

Plus: data center builders are racing to offload stakes worth billions, Wall Street is warming to Apple's AI strategy, and what separates confident leaders from arrogant ones.

This new AI platform reduces the cost for commercial due diligence by 10x. Get access here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Banks are Eating Again

The biggest banks posted quarterly results yesterday, and it turns out they are on a roll. JPMorgan, Goldman, Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo collectively earned more than $49 billion last quarter, up 39% from a year ago, with revenues rising more than 20%. Jamie Dimon even said conditions were getting close to “as good as it gets.”

The quarter was basically a Wall Street buffet. SpaceX pulled off the biggest IPO in history, but even without counting SpaceX, U.S. IPO proceeds more than doubled from a year earlier. M&A volume in the first half hit record levels in the U.S. and globally, while Goldman more than doubled its equity underwriting fees to nearly $1 billion on the back of the SpaceX mandate.

Trading floors feasted too, helped by volatility in the Middle East and a market that gave clients plenty of reasons to trade. Goldman posted record equities revenue, up 72%. JPMorgan’s equity markets revenue jumped 86%, and Bank of America logged record sales and trading revenue of $7.1 billion, with equities up 70%. Volatility is terrifying for normal people, but for trading desks it can be a giant windfall.

Then there is the AI money machine. Banks are not just advising AI companies. They are financing the entire build-out: chips, data centers, power, infrastructure, energy and every other industry trying to bolt an AI strategy onto its investor deck. David Solomon said the AI financing cycle is still in its early stages, which means data centers are not done borrowing, and the fee meters are not done running.

Takeaway: Big banks just had one of those quarters where every part of the franchise worked at the same time, which does not happen often and almost never lasts forever. IPOs came back, M&A ripped, trading desks feasted on volatility, and AI financing created a fresh fee stream. The only problem with “as good as it gets” is that it usually comes with an expiration date. Wall Street is eating again, and the only question is how long the buffet stays open.

PRESENTED BY DILIGENCESQUARED

How to Skip the $500k McKinsey Bill

Most funds skip commercial due diligence early on. Not because it wouldn’t help, but because at $500K to $1M a pop, they can’t afford to. So they wait until after initial IC and first-round bids, go deep on a few late-stage bets, and pray the thesis holds.

DiligenceSquared runs AI-native CDD at a fraction of that cost. Built by ex-Blackstone and BCG operators, it delivers investment-grade market and customer insight, so funds screen more targets earlier, reach conviction before the competition, and save the heavy spend for deals that already cleared the commercial bar.

Help your fund win deals faster. Book a demo today.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• IBM stock craters 25%, the worst day on record, after company issues second-quarter earnings warning (CNBC)

• JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs face new competition from Apollo on lending (BB)

• 'Landmaxxing': the new way rich people are buying property (WSJ)

• Warsh says Fed has 'no tolerance' for elevated inflation (BB)

• NY state bill may give shoppers a 10% deal for self-checkout (NY Post)

• Buffett to offload Berkshire stake in 8 years as Gates snubbed (BB)

• Data-center builders are racing to offload stakes worth billions (WSJ)

• Wall Street warms to Apple's AI strategy (Axios)

• Apple is in talks with a startup that squeezes powerful AI models onto iPhones (CNBC)

• Bank earnings takeaways: From Goldman Sachs's SpaceX IPO fees to JPMorgan's AI job cuts (CNBC)

• EQT forms new venture capital fund to house some existing tech stakes (WSJ)

• Jamie Dimon has a long wish list for his successor at JPMorgan (BB)

• JPMorgan urges staff to avoid deploying pricey AI for easy tasks (BB)

• Private credit stress test as higher rates squeeze borrowers (CNBC)

• Goldman blows past stock trading records with $7.42 billion boon (BB)

• Citi beats every profit estimate as CEO's rebuild gains steam (BB)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• U.S. equities moved higher after a cooler-than-expected June CPI report, while Treasury yields declined.

• The 10-year Treasury yield finished near 4.59%, and the U.S. dollar weakened against major currencies.

• International equity markets were mostly higher across Asia and Europe.

• WTI crude oil rose to near $80 per barrel amid renewed tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Inflation

• Headline CPI slowed to 3.5% year over year, below expectations of 3.9%.

• Core CPI cooled to 2.6%, below forecasts of 2.9%, with easing price pressures across shelter, food, energy, and transportation.

• Attention now turns to June PPI, with headline producer inflation expected at 6.4% year over year.

Earnings

• Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo all reported results above earnings and revenue expectations, providing a strong start to earnings season.

• S&P 500 earnings are expected to grow approximately 21% year over year, led by energy, technology, and materials.

• Ten of the eleven S&P 500 sectors are currently expected to report year-over-year earnings growth.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Goldman Sachs ($GS) +9% after crushing Q2 estimates as market volatility from the Iran conflict and landmark IPOs including SpaceX and SK Hynix.

• (–) Lucid ($LCID) -16% because a report claimed restructuring firm AlixPartners had presented Lucid’s board with options including a take-private deal or Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

• (–) IBM ($IBM) -25% after a Q2 pre-announcement revealed customers shifting IT spend away from IBM’s software and infrastructure toward AI hardware.

Prediction Markets

• Producer Price Index (PPI) for June comes out today around 8:30am EDT.

• Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

• PixVerse, a video-generation startup, raised $439 million

• Chai Discovery, an AI drug discovery company, raised $400 million

• LimX Dynamics, a Chinese humanoid robotics company, raised $200 million

• Contraline, a maker of male contraceptives, raised $92.5 million

• Singularity, a drone countermeasure company, raised $80 million

• State Affairs, an AI platform for regulatory information, raised $70 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Code Red

Description:
A timely examination from Wynton Hall of the geopolitical, technological, and ideological battle surrounding artificial intelligence. The book explores how AI has become a strategic competition involving governments, technology companies, and global superpowers, with a particular focus on the United States and China. Blending politics, national security, and emerging technology, it examines the race to shape the future of AI and the profound consequences for economic leadership, military power, and individual freedom.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: September 9, 2025

Ideal For:
Readers interested in artificial intelligence, geopolitics, national security, and the global competition to shape the future of technology.

The race to lead artificial intelligence is ultimately a race to shape the future of power itself.

DAILY VISUAL

Memory Companies Expected to Report Big Sales Jump

PRESENTED BY PRIMER

Claude for Excel Only Scored 48% on its Analyst Exam

A leading analyst training firm put the top AI tools through a classic first-year assignment, a fully integrated three-statement model for Apple, and graded them like trainees. ChatGPT scored 43%, Claude managed 48%, and Shortcut topped the field at 50%. All of them failed. Yet, most investors still paste tickers into these chatbots and trust their modeling (and research).

Tier 1 Hedge funds run their work through Primer instead, which took the same test and scored 81%, a full 31 points clear of Shortcut.* Built by former hedge fund investors to help analysts do higher quality, more robust research. Until now, access was reserved for institutions. Today it's open to everyone.

Get your own hedge fund analyst.

DAILY ACUMEN

Winner’s Curse

In any competitive auction, the person who wins is, by definition, the one who was most optimistic about the asset. Which means the winner is usually the participant whose estimate was furthest above everyone else's, and the prize for that optimism is the privilege of overpaying. The very act of winning is evidence that you were probably wrong.

This is why so many acquisitions destroy value and so many bidding wars end badly. The winning bid was not a signal of superior insight. It was a signal that ten sophisticated parties looked at the same thing and you were the one who liked it most, which is a far less flattering description of the same event.

The discipline is to feel a flicker of dread rather than triumph when you win a contested process. Ask what the underbidders saw that you did not. Sometimes you were genuinely right and they were slow. More often, you were simply the most excited person in a room full of people who had done the same math and stopped sooner.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• What separates confident leaders from arrogant ones

• The lost art of leisure 

• The neuroscience of complaining

• How CEOs balance workouts with workloads

• The psychology behind chatbot-fueled delusions

• Build unique workflows for your firm*

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 1000+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.