Global Rates

A quieter global session that mostly watched Washington. The June FOMC minutes revealed a committee at war with itself — hike and cut cases argued in the same room — and global rates took the ambiguity as license to drift: US yields firmed (10Y ~4.48), the July-hike market faded from its post-minutes spike, and the dollar held its ground, which for Tokyo means another day at the bottom of a 40-year hole. The BoJ September market crawled from 6c to 9c on still-minimal volume — six days from the July 15 statement that either converts our watchlist entry into the book's highest-payout position or retires it. The pattern of this week is worth naming for the archive: markets keep round-tripping on narrative (the US CPI bracket complex went 3.8 → 4.0-4.2 → 3.8 in 48 hours while the underlying nowcast never moved), and the discipline of anchoring to official-data models over crowd repricing has now been paid four times in five sessions — the Hormuz exit, the July-hike convergence trade, the CPI bracket hold, and the July-hike exit timing. New today on the US book: a $25 position that the 10-year Treasury yield touches 4.80% before year-end (16.5c, rules verified against the Treasury's official daily curve) — globally relevant because a US long-end selloff exports term premium everywhere. China Q2 GDP (~Jul 15) unchanged at 73c; ECB static; gold's July $4,300 bracket still a no-trade into CPI. The 168-hour countdown continues: CPI Tuesday, BoJ and China Wednesday.