📊 Today's Numbers
Brent Crude ▲ $79.00+/bbl: up 4% on fresh Hormuz strikes
Gold ▼ $4,113.70/oz: down 0.65%, 20%+ off January's record
U.S. Mortgage Rate ■ ~6.50%: new housing law, same affordability wall
ASX 200 ■ ~8,800 pts: materials selling, financials rotating in
RBA August Hike Pricing ▲ ~6bp: market quietly flips from cuts to hikes
European ETF AUM ▲ $3.74 trillion: 45 straight months of inflows
🛢️ COMMODITIES
Photo: Michael Steinberg
New U.S. Iran Strikes Send Brent Crude Back Above $79 a Barrel
Overnight airstrikes on Iranian targets have cracked open the Strait of Hormuz story again, and the oil market responded immediately. The fragile June ceasefire is wobbling, tanker traffic is falling, and the EIA's freshly cut $74 forecast already looks like yesterday's news.
Brent surged 4.00% to above $79/barrel at the European open, with the $80 level now in sight as a conflict-premium threshold
Strait of Hormuz transits dropped sharply overnight, echoing the near-zero transit day of July 8 when 48 ships moved through versus a pre-war peak of 165. The Strait carries roughly 27% of the world's seaborne crude.
The EIA cut its Q3 Brent outlook to $74/barrel just six days ago. Analysts at S&P Global Commodities are already calling it too optimistic if disruptions run into August.
Higher war-risk insurance and tanker charter repricing are adding cost before a single barrel is even blocked, per Rystad Energy's Jorge Leon
💬 Every week of Strait disruption tightens oil supply for China, India, Japan, and South Korea — four countries that together absorb 75% of Gulf crude. This isn't just a pump-price story.
🏦 MACROECONOMIC
Photo: Khwanchai Phanthong
U.S. Housing Affordability Act Becomes Law, Banning Fed Digital Dollar to 2030
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act signed into law on July 12 is getting coverage as a homebuyer story. It is. But Section 1001 quietly does something else entirely, and the stablecoin market noticed before most housing analysts did.
Mortgage rates remain at ~6.50%, meaning the law's construction-cost incentives will ease prices over a 3 to 5 year horizon, not this quarter
The CBDC ban runs through December 31, 2030, prohibiting the Fed from issuing any digital dollar directly or via intermediary banks. Circle's USDC ($73.20 billion in circulation) and Tether's USDT ($184.10 billion) are explicitly exempted.
Circle had already secured OCC trust bank approval on July 10, positioning private stablecoins as the de facto digital dollar infrastructure heading into the next decade
💬 The law that was supposed to make houses cheaper also quietly shut the door on a government-issued digital dollar until at least 2031. That second part may move more money markets than the first.
🏦 MACROECONOMIC
Photo: Atlantic Ambience
Australia's Rate Market Prices Fresh Tightening as RBA August Hike Risk Grows
Earlier this year, Australian markets were pricing rate cuts. That consensus has flipped. Rate futures now see roughly 6 basis points of tightening at the August RBA meeting, and 14 basis points total through year-end. Add a fresh oil spike to an already-stretched consumer, and the August meeting just got a lot more interesting.
~6bp of RBA tightening priced for August, with 14bp cumulative across the rest of 2026. This is a significant shift from the rate-cut expectations that dominated in the first half.
Westpac consumer sentiment fell 2.90% to 80.60 in June, one of the weakest readings in the survey's near 50-year history. Households are already stretched.
ASX 200 trading near 8,800, with materials under heavy selling pressure while capital rotates into financials, which benefit from rate-rise repricing
💬 Australian households are among the most indebted in the world. A 25bp hike adds roughly A$80–A$100 per month to a A$500,000 variable mortgage. That's the number the RBA board will be staring at in August.
📰 Also Today
European stocks opened lower on July 13 as fresh U.S. airstrikes on Iran renewed Hormuz fears, with the ECB's 2.25% benchmark rate leaving policymakers little room to cushion another energy shock on top of June's 2.80% CPI reading.
European ETFs hit $3.74 trillion in AUM on the back of $265.65 billion in year-to-date net inflows, marking 45 consecutive months of positive flows — still unclear whether renewed geopolitical volatility will test whether that structural demand for passive vehicles holds into Q3.
Gold closed at $4,113.70/oz on July 12, down 0.65% on the day and more than 20% off its January 29 all-time intraday high of $5,626.80, with Goldman Sachs and UBS keeping it range-bound at $4,000–$4,400 for Q3 even as Brent surges.
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Not investment advice. For informational purposes only.