The Frog Notices That the Water Is Getting Hotter

Pre-market futures were cruising along at modestly lower levels while most US traders were wiping sleep from their eyes but then took a sharp turn southward at about 7:15 am CT.  The proximate cause might have been nothing more than some stop-loss orders being triggered when September ES futures broke below the 7,500 level, but the magnitude of that break seemed to make traders immediately more cognizant of the rising oil prices and bond yields that had been nipping at markets for the past few weeks.

We can see the sudden drop in the chart below:

ES Sep 2026 Futures, 2 Days, 2-Minute Candles

Source: Interactive Brokers

After yesterday’s close, the S&P 500 (SPX) was almost exactly unchanged for the month of July.  We made a few attempts to recoup the prior index highs but never quite managed to accomplish that.  As I type this, we are now down by about 1% for the month, of course. 

SPX, 1-Month Hourly Bars

Source: Interactive Brokers

The sideways-to-higher moves over the past three weeks came despite a backdrop of higher oil prices and higher yields.  There were certainly plenty of headlines alerting us when front-month Brent futures touched $100 this morning as part of a 6% jump after Houthis attacked two ships in the Red Sea.  There is no question that oil should have jumped after news of that type, but that only explains the last $6 of a nearly $30 rise this month.  Stocks shrugged off the first $24 or so without much concern.  Today, it has become much more concerning.

September Futures on WTI (CL, red/green 1-month, 30-minute bars) and Brent (COIL, blue line)

Source: Interactive Brokers

Stock traders haven’t seemed to care about rising oil prices, but Treasury bond traders have.  Over the past month, those yields have risen by roughly 10 basis points at the short end of the yield curve and by roughly 20 basis points for maturities of 3 years and longer.  We saw 30-year bonds definitively cross through the 5% yield threshold on July 7^th, and they have not looked back since.   

US Treasury Actives Yield Curve, Today (solid green line with dots), 1 Week Ago (orange dotted line), 1 Month Ago (green dashed line)

Source: Bloomberg

The move at the short end of the curve can be directly attributed to changing perceptions about the likelihood of rate hikes in the coming months.  Chances of a hike fell earlier this month when oil prices had ebbed, the June employment report disappointed, and CPI and PPI reports revealed lower-than-expected inflation.  They have been starting to rise again.  Fed Funds are currently pricing in a 38% chance of a hike next week and a 100% chance of a hike in September.  On July 15^th those probabilities were 10% and 55%, respectively.  That said, IBKR ForecastTrader markets remain more sanguine about the likelihood of Fed inaction, as the charts below show.

IBKR ForecastTrader Probabilities for Rate Hikes at the July (top) and September (bottom) FOMC Meetings

Source: Interactive Brokers

We can debate the exact reason for today’s selloff, since there are several potential catalysts.  We’ve already laid out a few – higher oil prices and yields are certainly important factors, but as noted above, stocks have generally been shrugging them off for weeks.  We have frequently noted that stock traders are particularly adept at ignoring geopolitical factors until or unless they affect the factors that directly influence equity valuations.  By that, we mean revenues, earnings, and cash flow (even if interest rates also should play a key role).  Today we are also factoring in major news about those factors as well.

Investors are not responding well to the post-earnings commentary from Tesla (TSLA) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL).  The 14% and 7% respective declines in those stocks are far greater than options markets were pricing in yesterday, and that underperformance is directly related to concerns about cash flows related to AI spending.  That is why we see the other hyperscalers falling in sympathy, but semiconductors are a relative outperformer today.  The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) is down only 0.4%, even as SPX is down by 1.2%.  The brief renaissance of the “takers” that we saw late last week and earlier this week has faded in favor of the “makers” – in other words, the recipients of that largesse.

Thus, we might be finding ourselves in a situation where events in specific shares have forced inwardly focused investors to take more notice of rising global tensions.  Like the proverbial frog in a pot on a stove, gradual changes can go unnoticed for some time until they simply can’t be ignored any longer.