Thursday's PCE report - the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge - showed prices rising at a 4.1% annual rate in May, the highest level since April 2023. Core PCE, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, climbed to 3.4%, also a multi-year high. Both readings came in right in line with what economists expected, but "in line with expectations" does not mean comfortable.

The driver is mostly energy. The war in Iran sent oil and gasoline prices soaring earlier this year, and that shock has been working its way through the broader economy ever since. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, put it plainly: "Inflation is at a 3-year high due to the war in Iran and it's painful for middle-class and moderate-income Americans. People are spending more on gas, along with healthcare and utilities."

There is a genuine silver lining buried in this report. Oil prices have fallen sharply since their May peak - down nearly 39% from the high - which means May's inflation reading may represent the peak of this cycle. Several economists, including RSM's Joseph Brusuelas, expect a cooler print when June's data comes out, simply because gas prices have already come down. The harder question is whether core inflation - the part that excludes energy - keeps climbing on its own, driven by tariffs, AI infrastructure spending, and sticky services prices.

On Thursday, Apple raised prices across nearly its entire product lineup - Macs, iPads, HomePod, Apple TV, and Vision Pro - in what the company called an "unprecedented challenge." The cause is not tariffs or trade policy. It is a global memory chip shortage, now nicknamed "RAM-ageddon," caused by AI data centers buying up the same DRAM and NAND chips that go into laptops, phones, and game consoles. Contract DRAM prices jumped 80 to 90% in the first quarter of this year alone.

Here is the mechanism in plain terms: AI servers need a specialized, high-margin type of memory called HBM, made on the same production lines as ordinary consumer memory. Because HBM is three to five times more profitable for chipmakers like Micron and SK Hynix, they have shifted capacity away from consumer chips toward AI customers - starving the supply that Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and others depend on. Apple's statement was blunt: "We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly." Apple shares fell more than 6% on the news, their worst single session since April 2025.

Notably, the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods were left untouched this round - but analysts widely expect that to change later this year. Industry analyst Nabila Popal said the Mac and iPad hikes were larger than she expected, which suggests upcoming iPhone price increases - expected with the iPhone 18 launch in the fall - could be steeper too, possibly as much as $200 on Pro models.

Thursday brings the June jobs report, and it arrives at an unusual moment: the actual hiring data has been beating expectations for three months running, while the public mood about the job market has not budged. May's report added 172,000 jobs against a much lower forecast, and unemployment has held at a healthy 4.3%. By almost any historical standard, this is a strong labor market.

Yet the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumer Sentiment found that 54% of Americans expect unemployment to rise over the next year - a level of pessimism the survey compares to the depths of the Great Recession. Tuesday's Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index will offer another read on whether that gloom is easing or deepening. Retailers are already responding to this disconnect: Home Depot and McDonald's have both flagged that price-conscious consumers are spending more cautiously, and General Mills told investors in February that lower-income households are limiting full-price purchases.

The gap between the data and the mood is not unprecedented, but it matters for how this week's numbers will be read. A solid June jobs report would normally be unambiguous good news. In an environment of high inflation, elevated rates, and rising prices on everyday goods, even strong hiring numbers may not be enough to shift how people feel about their own financial situation.

With inflation dominating headlines and household budgets feeling squeezed, it is worth stepping back and asking a different question: how many people actually reach millionaire status, and what do they tend to do differently? A seven-figure net worth has become far more common over the past two decades than most people assume, driven largely by home equity, retirement account growth, and decades of consistent investing rather than any single windfall.

The common thread among most self-made millionaires is not a high salary or a lucky break. It is time in the market, automatic and consistent saving, and avoiding the kind of high-interest debt that quietly erodes wealth year after year. None of that is exciting, and none of it requires perfect timing on any individual stock, sector, or economic headline.

This matters more than ever in a week like this one. It is easy to feel like the financial news cycle - inflation reports, price hikes, chip shortages, geopolitical flare-ups - is something that happens to you rather than something you can build resilience against. The data on millionaires tells a more hopeful story: most of them got there through boring, repeatable habits sustained over a long period of time, not by perfectly predicting any of the headlines in this newsletter.

This is a shortened, lighter week heading into the holiday. With markets closed Friday, expect lower trading volume and potentially exaggerated price moves on any news that does break through Wednesday and Thursday.

That sentence captures something important about 2026: the AI boom is no longer just a stock market story confined to a handful of tech companies. It is now directly inside the price of the laptop you buy, the inflation report the Fed reads, and the earnings calls of companies that have nothing to do with artificial intelligence on the surface.

This week's one action: If a laptop, tablet, or other major electronics purchase is genuinely on your radar for the next six months, do the math on buying now versus waiting. With memory chip shortages expected to persist into 2027 and beyond, prices are far more likely to climb further than to come back down anytime soon.

This is not a call to panic-buy anything. It is a call to be deliberate: if you were already planning the purchase, moving it earlier in your budget may save you real money. If it was a "maybe someday" purchase, there is no urgency created by this news alone.

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