What Happened?
A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after a soft Producer Price Index (PPI) print reassured investors, countering fears of an industry-wide budget squeeze sparked by IBM a day earlier.
June wholesale inflation fell 0.3% against expectations for a flat reading, layering on top of the previous session's surprisingly sharp 0.4% decline in consumer prices. This consecutive confirmation of cooling inflation shifted market focus away from IBM's warning that clients are engaged in "capex reprioritization"—exhausting their IT budgets to secure supply-constrained AI servers and high-bandwidth memory instead of software.
Lower inflation data directly reduces Treasury yields by taking pressure off the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates high. This provides a mechanical valuation lift to growth stocks, whose valuations rely heavily on future cash flows.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Finance and Accounting Software company BILL (NYSE: BILL) jumped 7.4%. Is now the time to buy BILL? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Payments Software company Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ) jumped 6.4%. Is now the time to buy Marqeta? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Marketing Software company Upland Software (NASDAQ: UPLD) jumped 9.5%. Is now the time to buy Upland Software? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
Zooming In On Upland Software (UPLD)
Upland Software’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 69 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 16 days ago when the stock gained 9.1% on the news that the United States and Iran agreed to halt their tit-for-tat military exchanges, easing fears of a wider Middle East conflict that had rattled markets over the weekend.
The relief lifted the whole risk complex. The pre-existing trigger was the chip-to-software rotation, sparked by a June 25 report that OpenAI may delay its IPO, which softened the "SaaSpocalypse" fear that AI labs would quickly cannibalize incumbent SaaS.
The Iran news matters for software through the rate channel. Lower oil eases the inflation impulse that had pushed traders to price in a Fed rate hike later in the year, and falling rate-hike odds disproportionately help long-duration, high-multiple growth software exactly the cohort hit hardest in 2026. So, the de-escalation removed a macro overhang, at the same moment the micro narrative (OpenAI's constraints) reduced the existential AI-disruption fear.
Upland Software is up 271% since the beginning of the year, and at $5.57 per share, it has set a new 52-week high. Despite the year-to-date gain, investors who bought $1,000 worth of Upland Software’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $147.12.
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