The new Fed Chair has tamed the the front end of the curve - for now. Tension between Gold and AI chipmakers. Long term is still anyone's guess as the AI story continues despite hyperscaler concerns.
Jul 14, 2026
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Hello again, and welcome to our Monthly Market Compass for July 2026. These chart-heavy market summaries go out each month.
These notes are not investment advice and are for informational purposes only. Always do your own research. Sources can be found below each graphic.
As usual, we divide these monthly notes into several sections: an introduction and inflation section, an economy section, a liquidity section, a Fed-focused section, a geopolitics and commodities section, a crypto section, and an equities section. A market conclusion follows these sections. Enjoy!
Introduction and Inflation:
Welcome back for a new month!
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The USD vs Gold continues to be a focal point of global markets.
Both from the aftermath of events in Venezuela and Iran, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted at the end of June, since both countries price their oil in dollars:
And from the expectations at the front end of the UST yield curve towards the potential for future rate hikes, rather than cuts (the UST 2yr being the lead indicator for the Fed):
We’ve been noting the similarity to the 1970s inflation cycle for many months now, and now some bigger names (in this case Morgan Stanley) have put the inflation overlay chart into a major research product:
Here is Europe (a bit hard to see, but these are rates on UK, French, and German 10yr debt, all moving higher starting in 2022 and continuing to move higher now):
As we've gone over many times, the concern with rising long-term rates is how they translate into rising interest expense as a line item in national budgets.
Here is Germany dealing with their increasing interest rate expense:
On a separate note, we saw the SpaceX IPO this past month, along with the concern that major IPOs often occur directly before a market crash of some type:
