Free Markets · Honest Money · No Apologies
Saturday Trader’s Brief Holiday Read · Markets Closed · America’s 250th Birthday · Reopen Monday 9:30 ET
The Week | S&P +1.7% Best Wk in 2 Mo — Dow record 52,900; small caps’ best first half in decades |
The Board | 6 GREEN 3 Yellow · 2 RED — Full CCI(20) restored: XLF up to green, XLI down to red |
10Y Treasury | 4.49% 30Y 4.99% — The long end still won’t rally; QT quietly resumed |
Honest Money | Gold $4,196 Record High — Silver $62.8; dollar 100.5; bitcoin −32% off its high |
Next Tape | Closed til Mon OPEC+ Sunday — ISM Mon; SpaceX NDX Tue; FOMC minutes Wed |
Happy 250th, America — the tape takes the weekend off. The exchanges are dark today and stay dark until Monday’s 9:30 open, which makes this the right morning for the ledger instead of the ticker. The week behind us: the S&P booked its best week in two months, +1.7% (Seeking Alpha), the Dow closed Thursday at a record 52,900, the Nasdaq bled as the semis unwound ~10% in two sessions — and the Russell 2000’s ~22% first half is the biggest small-stock run in decades (WSJ). For the anniversary-minded: U.S. stocks have returned 8.7% a year since 1776 (MarketWatch).
The momentum board got its math back — and the real math moved two lights. The standard CCI(20) feed (down on Friday’s run) is restored. Off Thursday’s close the board reads six green, three yellow, two red: Financials was promoted to GREEN (CCI +181, above both its prior +109 and its +136 trend average) and Industrials slipped to RED (+91, below both its prior +102 and its +111 trend). Technology’s red is confirmed by the real numbers (−63 against a +3 prior). The greens: Health Care, Financials, Energy, Staples, Utilities, Materials. The rotation is broader than Friday’s estimate suggested — it has a cyclical leg, not just a soup-and-electricity leg.
The only market event that trades on a holiday weekend is tomorrow. OPEC+ decides August output Sunday with the Strait of Hormuz still charging tolls. The backdrop shifted under it this week: Gulf oil exports jumped more than 3 million barrels a day in June on record UAE flows — yet remain 40% below pre-war levels — and Chinese independent refiners are hoovering up discounted Mideast barrels (Reuters). The decision sets Monday’s open for the entire energy tape.
The story under the fireworks is the power grid. PJM — the nation’s largest grid operator — escalated emergency actions under a federal alert Friday to avoid blackouts, fighting generator outages, overloaded lines and a heat-wave air-conditioning surge that runs through the holiday (Reuters, CNBC). Utilities’ green light is not just a rates trade; it is a demand story you can measure in degrees Fahrenheit.
Trader’s call for Monday. Two tells when the tape returns: do the semis (MU, AMD, MRVL, SMH) find a bid or does the unwind run a third day — and do the six greens hold once real volume replaces holiday drift? OPEC+ answers first, Sunday. ISM Services Monday 10 AM, SpaceX enters the Nasdaq-100 Tuesday, FOMC minutes Wednesday, PepsiCo and Delta open Q2 season Thursday. Keep 6–10% in T-bills and let the board, not the barbecue, set the map.