💭 Weekly Outlook

5-Day Scoreboard:
S&P +1.8% | Nasdaq +0.7% | DAX +4.5% | BTC +4.9% | Oil -2.3% | Gold +2.1%
Welcome to H2. The first July trading days are seasonally strong, and even with July 3rd missing (US holiday), the tape delivered okayish (see above).
➡️ Newsflow was thin, as flagged last week. Still, a few things we learned:
> Warsh stays committed to ZERO forward guidance .Sintra gave nothing new on the rate path. Balance-sheet runoff (QT) + inflation remain his headline themes.
>The Supreme Court clarified: the President can remove Fed governors "for cause", but only after a hearing where they get to respond. Pre-deciding a firing via social media? Not allowed. Fed independence lives another day.
>US jobs data stays a joke as a real-economy gauge: the prior two months got revised DOWN by 70k+ again. Building macro calls on this is building on sand.
>US–Iran negotiation ping-pong grinds on. Market still doesn't care. Same as the last 50 times.
One chart worth your time (below): WTI is back near pre-Iran-war levels (~$69), yet gas at the pump is slow to follow. Cue the political outrage that oil majors aren't passing it through. The nuance both sides conveniently skip: the fuel being sold now was bought at the OLD, higher oil price and has to clear first.
➡️ What's coming next week:
Essentially one big macro event: the FOMC Minutes on Wednesday. Warsh will keep giving nothing in pressers, but the Minutes show the anonymized internal debate, which is therefore much more important than it has been in the past.
The real question: how split is this Fed?
Answer, per the dot-plot (chart below): maximally split. 9 members want hikes in 2026, 9 want to hold or cut. Warsh himself set NO dot at all & leans dovish on the funds rate. So… a razor-thin majority for no hike?
➡️ And when does it get spicy again?
Week after probably as the Earnings season kicks off. Q1 printed a monster +27% EPS growth, but ~10pp came from the mark-up on AMZN/GOOGL/NVDA "chatbot stakes" (other income), which most likely will not repeat. Consensus still sees Q2 strong at ~+22% though and historically earnings beat 80% of the time, so it should be fine. Also most analysts predict that cool on base effects will be visibile early next year, not now.
Happy new week.