Live, today's note FX, macro, ~6 min read

Iran round two. Brent bid, gold reclaimed $4,000, dollar quiet.

Iran retaliated Friday against the sixth night of US strikes with attacks on US targets across the region and instructions to Houthi forces on Red Sea shipping. Brent added +3.18% to $86.75, extending the weekly gain to +14%. Gold reclaimed the $4,000 handle within one session of Thursday's break, closing +$31 to $4,017. DXY held Thursday's reassertion at 100.75 (+7 pips), 10Y softened 1.9bp to 4.55 on the safe-haven bid. Round two of the Iran shock extends the geopolitical premium rather than resolving it.

17 July 2026 · By Igor Komolov

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DXY, daily close

19 Jun to 17 Jul

100.75

-0.31% wk

Source: ICE DXY, daily close. Annotation by TradingFuse.

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Reference 17 Jul · I.K. · 9 min

A plain-English guide to shipping chokepoints and oil supply risk.

Roughly 60 percent of world oil moves by sea, funneled through five narrow passages. Hormuz (20 mbpd, no full commercial bypass), Bab-el-Mandeb / Red Sea (6-7 mbpd oil plus most Asia-Europe container flow), Suez, Malacca (25 mbpd), Turkish Straits. This piece sets out what each carries, the historical premium a threat produces, the market signals (Brent-WTI spread, options skew, tanker rates), and why the Iran-retaliation story reaches oil specifically through Hormuz and the Red Sea rather than through Iran’s own barrels.

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Macro 16 Jul · I.K. · 7 min

Retail sales firm, claims low. The dollar reasserted. Gold pierced $4,000.

June headline retail sales printed +0.6% month-over-month, well above the +0.1% consensus. Weekly jobless claims came in at 221k, below the 235k expectation. The firm demand-side data pushed back on the dovish PPI take. The 10-year retraced 2bp back to 4.56, DXY added 23 pips to 100.68, EUR/USD gave back 25 pips to 1.1445, USD/JPY reclaimed 162.38, gold sold off 1.8% to $3,986 (the first sub-$4,000 close since June 24), Brent softened 0.8% to $84.08. The dovish framework got tested and partially unwound.

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Reference 16 Jul · I.K. · 8 min

A plain-English guide to reading retail sales against a disinflation print.

Retail sales measures consumer demand. When it comes in firm the day after a soft CPI/PPI combination, markets have to reconcile: is inflation falling because demand is cooling, or is it falling despite demand holding up? The two interpretations point to different Fed paths. This piece sets out the four components that matter, the control-group aggregate, and how to read a firm-retail-sales-into-soft-inflation combination.

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Macro 15 Jul · I.K. · 7 min

PPI cooled. The rate market extended dovish. The dollar cracked.

June headline PPI printed at 0.0% month-over-month, below the 0.2% consensus. Core PPI landed at the same 0.0% mark. Two consecutive dovish prints out of the CPI-PPI window pushed the OIS curve toward earlier easing. The 10-year drifted 3bp lower to 4.54, DXY broke through 100.50 support to close at 100.45 (the lowest print of the July run), EUR/USD reclaimed 1.147, USD/JPY finally softened 12 pips to 162.08. Yesterday’s Warsh-hawkish/CPI-dovish split resolved dovish overnight.

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Reference 15 Jul · I.K. · 8 min

A plain-English guide to reading PPI against CPI.

PPI arrives a day after CPI in most months and delivers the producer-side check on the consumer-price read. When PPI confirms the CPI direction, the disinflation or reinflation signal earns weight. When it contradicts, the market has to figure out which side of the supply chain is doing the moving. This piece sets out the mechanics, the components that matter, and how to read a same-week PPI-CPI combination.

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Macro 14 Jul · I.K. · 8 min

CPI cooled. Warsh stayed hawkish. The market split the difference.

June core CPI came in flat month-over-month at 2.6% year-on-year, materially below the 2.9% consensus and below the May reading. Chair Warsh’s congressional testimony an hour later refused to soften the "prices too high" framing: "That is not my view" on mission-accomplished, "no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation." The rate market went dovish (10Y -3bp), the currency market went mildly dovish (DXY -36 pips), the equity market went bullish, and Brent kept extending the Iran-shock rally. Multiple divergent responses to the same catalyst window.

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