In 30 seconds: Trump's sustained blockade of Iran has kept oil prices elevated well above pre-invasion levels, with crude near or above $100/barrel, though markets dipped sharply on any hint of diplomatic opening. China's global container export share and manufacturing surplus are hitting record levels while the US and China race to build separate AI supply chains, with Wall Street banks still financing Chinese high-tech deals. Financial commentator Luke Gromen and others share personal accounts of alleged vaccine injuries and express skepticism toward government vaccine recommendations, drawing significant engagement on financial social media.
The basic math of the Iran standoff is this: roughly 200 days after the US and Israel attacked Iran, crude remains $25 above its preinvasion price. At $25 above preinvasion levels, this is a qualitatively different shock than the Russia-Ukraine episode, which saw prices fall $7 from preinvasion levels at the same point. Crude has been hovering near $100/barrel, though a multi-day decline has recently pulled both Brent and WTI below that level. The reaction function is straightforward: on any headline, the crude market dives first and asks questions later. One such headline knocked prices down ~$3 per barrel in minutes. The energy complex is struggling through an echo of May's severe supply stress, and we are now 6 months into a regime of supply chain bottlenecks. Bond yields have surpassed 5%, the S&P 500 has not made any lasting progress since early June, and crude oil remains negatively correlated to equities while equities remain positively correlated to bond prices. One political risk consultancy puts it plainly: Trump has nothing but bad options, and as a result, he's become more indecisive. Escalation with Iran would do little to address Trump's growing economic and political problems — and yet Iran has an incentive to disrupt oil markets before the US midterms. The estimated cost to rebuild damaged Middle Eastern energy infrastructure already sits at $5 billion.
China's manufacturing surplus excluding gold is on track to hit $3 trillion this year, a record, and the numbers keep accelerating. Export volumes have been growing at roughly 10% year over year for several years running. The surplus reflects sustained domestic weakness in the Chinese economy over the last five years. China's share of global container exports rose 2.5 percentage points in just nine months. China's surplus in manufactures (ex gold): $3 trillion. China's gold imports as a share of GDP have climbed from 0.5% to 1.5%, a 1 pp jump. Gold itself closed at $4,399.50, up 0.36% on the day. China's surplus in manufactures (ex gold): $3 trillion. Wall Street banks have acted as bookrunners on 19 Chinese high-tech equity deals worth $17.2 billion so far this year.
There is a genre of financial commentary that starts with sovereign debt dynamics and ends, somehow, with vaccine skepticism. The connective tissue is distrust of institutions, and the logic, once you accept the premises, is internally consistent. He describes himself as the husband of a vx-injured wife and the father of 2 vx-injured sons, who was then forced to go down that rabbit hole to get them all back to healthy. The family's injuries, he says, date to circa 2011. He reports that Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, called a 'quack' by the establishment and labeled one of the 'Disinformation Dozen' during COVID, helped his family immensely. Her protocols, he says, got the family back to full health, and his household of five adults now takes zero regular prescriptions. His personal anecdotes are specific. He says he personally knows 2 people who had a heart attack within weeks of the vaccine, several more who had rapid-onset cancers, and one who received the bivalent COVID vaccine at 10 a.m. one morning and was dead by 7 p.m. that night — none of whom were reported or investigated as vaccine injuries. He adds that the system is very hostile to reporting vaccine injuries. Separately, he claims a friend who is a 25+ year veteran oncologist told him in 1Q22 'You wouldn't believe the sh*t we're seeing in our labs'. The broader argument runs through regulatory capture. In 1986, the US government indemnified vaccine manufacturers against harming or killing people with their products. By 2025, the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule had grown to 72 shots by age 18. The author says he got much healthier after stopping flu shots circa 2005. None of this is peer-reviewed epidemiology. These are anecdotes from a financial commentator, offered in the same authoritative register he uses to discuss macroeconomic topics. That is precisely what makes the phenomenon interesting. Whether he is right about vaccines is a different question entirely, but the audience does not always notice the domain shift.
Here is where the labor market stands for your paycheck.
Initial jobless claims: 196,000, down 4.85% on the week
Continuing claims: 1,730,000, down 2.20% on the week
Job openings (JOLTS): 7,271.00, up 1.24% on the month
Quits rate: 1.90, down 5.00% on the month
Unemployment rate: 4.10, flat 0.00% on the month