Weekly KAOS, 7/10/26
Hormuz Rattles, Oil Shrugs, Tech Splits, Deregulation
Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.
Themes of the Week
Live fire returns to Hormuz but crude round-trips to flat, the Tech tape splits into a semis-over-software civil war, and cooling payrolls + Deregulation hand the Warsh Fed a sliver of daylight
This was the week Oil turned into Schrödinger’s Oil — as I posted midweek, the price is trapped in a quantum superposition, pricing a war premium and a coming OPEC+ glut at the very same time, and the Fog of War stubbornly refuses to collapse the wave function either way. Trump declared the ceasefire “over,” US warplanes hit dozens of IRGC boats, Iran claimed retaliation across the Gulf — and Brent still can’t hold a bid. I don’t envy anyone trying to trade Oil right now; I’ll lay out both the Bull and the Bear below and let the Fog of War lift on its own schedule.
Away from crude, the throughline is Bifurcation — along several fronts.
The USD Wrecking Ball caught another bid as reserve managers quietly added dollars; the Tech complex is no longer “everything wins” but a Darwinian sort of Semis over Software — my DEBT GOVERNOR and SaaSpocalypse calls made visible on the tape. Finally, a cooler Labor number plus upcoming Deregulation lets me stay hopeful that the Benign Gravity of Disinflationary Growth can reassert — but the jury is very much still out, with Goldman now flagging AI as a genuine side door into core PCE.
