Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Thursday, July 9, 2026. The ceasefire lasted about as long as one of Uncle Donald's attention spans, and oil noticed before the rest of us finished our coffee.
Let me recap the wonderful world of finance. Yesterday the leader of the free world announced, through the usual channel, that the truce with Iran was over, and markets did what markets do, which is panic selectively. The Dow shed more than five hundred points, roughly one percent, because it is stuffed with the boring things that actually run on energy and borrowing. The S&P 500 slipped a polite two tenths, and the Nasdaq, bless it, closed green because the chipmakers staged one of their now ritual rebounds. So who actually won? Semiconductors, apparently, war or no war, inflation or no inflation. Everyone else pretended the missiles were a rounding error.
And yet. Here is the part le tout-Wall Street is conveniently not mentioning over its avocado toast. The June Fed minutes landed showing a committee split down the middle, no consensus, no cavalry, higher for longer if inflation misbehaves. Meanwhile oil is climbing and one year inflation expectations sit at 3.7 percent. Translation: the Fed cannot save you, and it is not even sure it wants to. The 10-year yield backed up to around 4.58 percent, a four week high, which is the bond market politely clearing its throat. Nobody wants to hear it.
The levels: Gold has slipped below 4,100 dollars, falling a second session, which is almost funny, a geopolitical flare-up and the supposed safe haven goes down, because everyone would rather hold yield than a shiny rock this week. WTI sits just above 74 dollars, jumpy, the only asset taking the war seriously. Bitcoin drags along near 62,850 with a fear gauge pinned at extreme fear, the tourists long gone. S&P futures are genuinely undecided this morning, some feeds green, some red, so I will not pretend to know, and honestly neither do they.
What is ahead. Weekly jobless claims at 8:30, existing home sales at 10, and PepsiCo ($PEP) reports before the bell, so we will all pretend to care deeply about snack volumes and soda pricing power for exactly one headline. The real show is whether the president posts again before lunch. Data is data. A single message moves oil three dollars.
Bleak takeaway. When gold falls during a war and yields rise into fear, the market is telling you it trusts nothing, least of all the story it told itself yesterday. Trade the noise if you must, but keep one eye on the exits.
Have a good one, and see you tomorrow.