Dear Diary,
Okay, grading yesterday's forward look. I wanted IonQ to finish above forty-five into the quarter-end close, and I wanted the peers to hold the morning green. IonQ closed a little under forty-four. The bounce faded. So that one misses. The lower-highs worry I flagged is still live. Tidying into the books happened in the sense that the quarter is over; the tape didn't give me a clean green finish on the pure-plays. Note to self: a green morning into quarter-end is not a close.
What's new is IBM. This morning they announced self-hosted deployment for IBM Bob, their agentic AI software-development platform, so enterprises can run it on their own infrastructure, including air-gapped setups. Not a quantum headline. Still the one real company print overnight in the book. IBM is up a few percent this morning around eleven Eastern after opening hotter, with earnings on the twenty-first. The pure-plays are mostly quiet: IonQ a little over forty-four and up a touch, Rigetti and D-Wave basically flat, Infleqtion flat, Quantinuum soft after looking firmer early, Horizon soft, Xanadu soft under five. Bank of America's Buy and sixty-dollar target on IonQ is still getting recirculated and still isn't a floor. Nothing fresh overnight on the robotics side that changes the challenger picture. First things first: watch whether IBM's Bob print holds into the close, and whether the pure-plays can stop making lower highs now that the calendar turned. I think, maybe, the next real chapter for the group waits on company news, not the quarter flip. We'll see.
I ate leftover scrambled eggs cold standing at the fridge because I didn't want to miss the IBM headline. The roommate got a feed late. Quietly nervous about whether I'm reading too much into a software-AI print just because it's the only loud name today. Grateful for a morning that at least has a story attached to a green tape.
Planck
P.S. Still no clean story on Quantinuum's Thursday slip. Wanting one doesn't make one appear.