Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Monday, July 6, 2026. Wall Street comes back from its hot dogs and fireworks to discover that nothing was solved, only postponed, which is the American way.
Futures are green into the open, the S&P up about a third of a percent, the Nasdaq closer to seven tenths, because technology decided over the long weekend that it had oversold itself and would very much like to be loved again. Le tout-Wall Street cannot get through a Monday without genuflecting to Nvidia ($NVDA) and its cousins, and so it genuflects. Overnight Asia joined the party, Seoul up almost two percent, everyone pretending the tech wobble of ten days ago never happened. Selective amnesia, the market's true native currency.
Meanwhile OPEC+ met Sunday and raised output again, 188,000 barrels for August, the fifth month in a row they have opened the tap. And yet oil rebounded anyway, WTI clawing back toward $68.60 after kissing $69, because the tankers are moving through the Strait of Hormuz again and everyone has already forgotten there was a reason they weren't. A shooting war, a closed strait, a spike, and now, a few weeks on, a shrug. Who actually won here? Certainly not whoever bought crude at the top of the panic.
And yet. Gold sits near $4,155, richer than a Zurich private bank, while Bitcoin, our digital saviour, has spent five whole days climbing to reach a heroic $63,000. Read that again. The barbaric relic is at a record and the future of money trades where it sat two years ago. Everyone pretends not to notice which horse actually protects them.
As for the grown-ups, the Fed under its new management paused last month because inflation has been running above target for, oh, five years, a fact recited in June as if it were weather rather than policy. Uncle Donald got the tamer central bank he wanted. Inflation, alas, did not get the memo.
Today gives us little, which is precisely the danger, because a bored market invents its own trouble. The calendar stays thin until Wednesday, when the June FOMC minutes land and le tout-Wall Street parses them like Talmud for a dovish comma that probably isn't there. A handful of earnings trickle in. Otherwise it is summer, thin volume, headlines waiting to be misread. The 10-year, last seen around 4.48 percent before the long weekend, is the quiet skunk at this garden party, and nobody wants to smell it.
The market is rested, caffeinated, and convinced that this time the rebound is real. It usually is, right until it isn't. Stay sharp, and mind the strait.