IBM notched an eye-watering 25% drop in its stock price yesterday, its biggest drop by market cap in company history.

Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images)

 

Hey Snackers,

Alvin and the Chipmunks are being rebooted for the next generation. Not only are they planning a theatrical release in late 2028, but they’ll also appear in digital-first, short-form content, almost like influencers, with clips and compilations of the Chipmunks reacting to cultural moments.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 rose yesterday as June inflation data came in well below estimates. Prediction market odds of a July Fed rate hike fell from 35% on Monday to 7% yesterday.* Five of the largest US banks reported big earnings beats before the bell yesterday, reporting a collective $49 billion in profits in Q2.

 
THEY BIG BLEW IT

IBM has its worst day since ’68 as it whiffs on the quarter. 

IBM notched an eye-watering 25% drop in its stock price yesterday, its biggest drop by market cap in company history. The cause? While IBM certainly was the first company to get a robot on “Jeopardy!,” a confluence of factors directly related to their failures in the AI race torpedoed the quarter for them and rattled investors. 

  • First up, the data center buildup has driven up costs and pushed companies to plow their IT budgets into servers and chips. That meant less money left in the pot for IBM’s mainframes and software, as discretionary IT spend bottoms out. 
  • This came as a surprise to IBM, and it couldn’t come at a worse time, as investors have already begun to consider a future in which IBM’s software products are replaced by competing AI tools. 
  • Revenue of $17.2 billion on expectations of $17.86 billion is bad, but having the stink of being one of those bloated SaaS companies that isn’t capitalizing on the AI boom is how you lose a quarter of your market cap in one session. 

Jacob Bourne of eMarketer called the situation — capex concentrating in hardware, diverting money from software, and a market downright eager to punish legacy companies who lose ground in the AI boom — “a triple whammy.”

THE TAKEAWAY

It used to be an axiom of the technology business that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Turns out all good things have to come to an end at some point. There’s another tech industry axiom that enters into play here, one relevant for a SaaS company that didn’t really demonstrate that the prevailing theme in markets is working for it: if you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.

 
DON’T MISS A PLAY

Subscribe to Scoreboard, our sports newsletter. Here’s a sneak peek:

The 2026 Home Run Derby gave us everything we could ask for, from homering hot-streaks to a classic Philadelphia crowd that cheered failures and booed successes. (We love you, Philly.) The final between Jordan Walker of the Cardinals and local Phillie favorite Kyle Schwarber saved the best for last, though. After Schwarber homered on six of his first eight swings, and then four of his final five — including clobbering a special last-swing ball to extend the round — it set the bar for Walker so high that the market gave Schwarber a 93.5% chance of winning. But after falling behind early, Walker stormed back with six consecutive homers (!) to close the round — four straight coming on do-or-die swings — to win what was arguably the greatest Derby in contest history:

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Snacks Shots

  • World Cup: After a thrilling semifinal yesterday that saw Spain beat France 2-0, today we see England take on Argentina to decide what the 2026 World Cup final will look like. England’s got the edge, but only slightly; markets are pricing in a 54% chance of an English victory, and a 45% chance of Argentina mounting a second consecutive return to the World Cup final. 

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

 

What else we're Snackin'

  • DeepSeek has begun preparations for an IPO, according to Bloomberg.
  • People are falling asleep in robotaxis, and if riders don’t respond, company protocols often require them to call 911. There’ve been 99 such calls in Austin during Waymo’s first nine months of service in the Texas capital.
  • These painted e-tattoos could be the future of wearable biosensors.
  • Shares of Lucid plunged yesterday on a report that the EV maker is considering either going private or entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
 

Snack Fact of the Day

A sugar molecule has been detected in interstellar space.

 

Wednesday

  • BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Johnson & Johnson expected to report earnings premarket. 
  • Federal Reserve’s Beige Book published at 2 p.m. ET. 
  • United Airlines expected to report earnings postmarket.
 

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