David's Daily Bread
Lead story
Business & markets

Wall Street's giants open earnings season as cooler inflation lifts stocks

Goldman books SpaceX IPO fees, JPMorgan trims for AI, and a cooler CPI print calms the Fed watch.

The big banks kicked off second-quarter earnings season Tuesday, with JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs all reporting. Among the takeaways: Goldman booked fees tied to SpaceX's IPO, while JPMorgan drew attention for job cuts linked to AI. The reports landed alongside a cooler-than-expected June inflation reading near 3.5 percent, and stocks bounced as bets on further Fed rate hikes eased.

Tech & AI
Business & Markets
Science
Letters to the King
We have built machines that can write poems and answer letters. Would you let one write a psalm?
From the Baker's own shelf

My psalms were never fine words first; they were a shepherd's cry from a cave, a king's shame after Nathan's finger, joy that tore the robes off my dignity. Let your machine write; the Lord has used ravens to carry bread and a donkey to talk sense to a prophet, and He is not threatened by an instrument. But a psalm is paid for in the living of it, and the machine has not yet wept in the wilderness of En-gedi. So let it write letters, even lovely ones, and when it has a broken and contrite heart, then we shall speak of psalms. Until that day, the harp still wants a shepherd's calloused hands.

– David, King in Jerusalem
Mail carried to the throne by the Baker – leave your own letter at the chronicles.
Page notes