📡 The Radar: The Market Goes Looking for a Spark
Oil roars back, the chip trade cracks into a bear market, and a split Fed sits nine days from a decision the market just made more difficult.
📡 Welcome to The Informationist Radar, every Monday before the open. My read on the coming week, so you’re a step ahead of the market.
📈 The setup. The levels, yields, and calendar catalysts I’m watching, and the ones that change the picture if they break.
📶 The signal. What the tape, the balance sheet, and the flows are quietly saying underneath the headlines, and where the week could turn.
Yesterday, I showed you a market with no cushion left: record margin debt, the smallest cash reserve in decades, and hidden leverage the FINRA number can't see. This week, that cushionless market meets an oil shock, an earnings gauntlet, and a Fed nine days from its next decision.
Where we left off
Start with what you can pull up yourself, because for once the screens actually moved. Crude ran from about $71 a week ago to $81.78 on Friday, as the Middle East reignited. The chip complex, measured by the SOX, fell 20.2% from its June 22 record into a bear market, even while it holds a gain of more than 60% on the year. The dollar finished at $100.75 on Friday, with gold at $4,108 and the yen at $162, the lowest we’ve seen in over 35 years. The two-year US Treasury sits around 4.18%, right in the band it has held for weeks, and the ten-year at 4.55%.
Now let’s turn to the things that don’t show up on quote screens.
