In the dead of night, a miraculous rally—taking a long, relieved exhale at last:

Global markets on Thursday finally took a long breath of relief:

- US stocks rose across the board: the Dow gained 0.27%, the S&P 500 rose 0.81%, and the Nasdaq jumped 1.30%;

- Gold and US Treasuries climbed in tandem: the gold price held steadily above $4100, while the yield on 10-year US Treasuries fell to 4.55%;

- Meanwhile, the US dollar and crude oil fell in sync: US crude oil appeared ready to probe the downside toward $70.

Wall Street had expected a day of major losses, yet a miraculous rally showed up instead:

First, Thursday’s rise had no reasonable logic. That day, the Federal Reserve released hawkish meeting minutes (among 18 officials, 9 leaned toward adding at least 25 basis points more in hikes within the year—some even completely erased forward guidance and switched to an extremely hardline “will achieve price stability” phrasing). And the US and Iran attacked each other again.

The Fed’s hawkish minutes didn’t crush the market—that’s actually the biggest story from Thursday. The minutes themselves were indeed hawkish, but what they reflected was the past: what Fed officials were thinking when they met a few weeks earlier. Then, afterwards, the market went through Non-Farm Payrolls, inflation expectations cooled, and oil prices slid toward $70. The market believed, “This is the hawkishness from the day of the meeting; it doesn’t have to be hawkish today as well.” So after the minutes were released, no new negative catalyst formed.

Second, the yield on 10-year US Treasuries is a key observation point. Intraday, it briefly rose to nearly 4.6% (a level that would be likely to trigger a selloff in the stock market), but as it approached that dangerous area, a reversal kicked in. This also happened before: every time this yield rose to the level the market feared, a reversal would follow. The 4.5%–4.6% range is the “abyss” that Wall Street is watching right now. When long-end US Treasury yields neared the 4.6% threshold again, they once again turned lower—supported by a kind of irrational logic behind the scenes: for allocation-oriented large funds, 10-year US Treasuries with a yield above 4.5% offer extremely high “risk-free” locking-in value. Every time it approaches 4.6%, buy-side demand triggers automatically, like a defensive mechanism.

Thursday’s “long sigh of relief” wasn’t because fundamentals improved, but because under nerves stretched extremely tight, the market found a brief balance and a moment to breathe. The 4.5% Treasury yield and the US dollar index at 100 still hang over Wall Street. As long as they don’t truly turn downward, every rally still has to pass new tests.

The real test comes next Tuesday (July 14), when the latest US CPI data will be released.