Your 5 weekly reads:

Range Takeaway: June's CPI did something rare: overall prices didn't just cool, they declined. Headline prices fell 0.4%, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020. More telling was what happened under the hood: for the first time since 2021, core inflation, which strips out food and energy, was flat on the month. That tells us the oil shock has yet to materially pass through to the rest of the economy, tariff headwinds continue to fade, and while the consumer is resilient, demand isn’t strong enough to sustain broad price increases. July rate hike expectations collapsed as investors concluded that absent a shift in the data, the Fed has far less urgency to tighten policy near-term.

For US banks, earnings typically arrive in a blitz that kicks off corporate reporting season. This week, six US megabanks reported within roughly 24 hours, offering a wide window into the health of financial markets and the broader economy. The readout? Wall Street is booming, and Main Street isn’t doing so bad itself. 

On the institutional side, investment banking continues to roar back. The SpaceX IPO generated roughly $500 million in underwriting fees for banks across the Street, and global M&A posted its biggest first half on record: $2.9 trillion in deals, up 50% from a year ago. Meanwhile, volatility from the Iran conflict, though painful at the gas pump, was a gift to trading desks, boosting equity revenues. 

As for the rest of us, nobody sees the consumer’s financial situation better than banks do. Credit card spending remained robust, while delinquencies came in lower than forecast. Asked about the "K-shaped economy” (where the rich prosper while lower-income households struggle), JPMorgan pushed back, citing healthy spending across the income spectrum. Bank of America went further, noting that households in the bottom third of earners are seeing wage growth and rising deposits.

Nonetheless, each CEO attached the same caveat. War, oil, and deficits could still crash the party. In Jamie Dimon's words: "It's getting close to as good as it gets. We just don't know how long it's going to last."

Over the next weeks, our investments team is breaking down the strategies we use to manage your portfolio, in plain English. First up is “tax-loss harvesting.”

Here’s the idea: You buy a jacket for $100; two weeks later it’s on sale for $80. In a store, that’s just bad timing. But investing works differently: when a stock you own drops in price, that $20 dip doesn’t have to go to waste. We can sell the position and buy a similar but not identical stock to lock in the $20 as a realized loss. We can then offset $20 of gains elsewhere, potentially lowering your tax bill.

Why not buy back the same stock? If you sell a security at a loss and buy back the same (or a “substantially identical”) one within 30 days, the IRS disallows the loss and calls it a “wash sale.” By replacing the original stock with a highly correlated but not identical one, you maintain your market exposure while harvesting the loss.

The real edge is consistency. Some investors only think about this in a December scramble. Range offers automated tax-loss harvesting that finds opportunities as they come up — because down days (and jacket sales) happen year-round.¹

Our founders got candid on why titles at startups matter less than you think, and Range lit up the streets of NYC from a billboard in Times Square. We had a busy week!

Plus: Blue Origin raised $10B in funding, and a San Francisco home listed for under $8M but sold for $15M cash.

Follow us on Instagram @rangefinance to catch our videos next week.

Wondering what your portfolio would look like at Range? Members can ask Rai: How does Range’s model portfolio compare to other Brokerages’?

Rai walks you through how we’d build and manage it: a globally diversified, low-cost core; tax-aware moves like asset location and tax-loss harvesting automatically layered in; and rebalancing that keeps you on track without the guesswork.²

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