2d • General discussion
7/16 – Market Update: Inflation Down - BTC/ETH Up - Time to buy?
- BTC: ~$64,000 (the price of one Bitcoin, up on the good news)
- ETH: ~$1,900 (the price of one Ethereum, quietly outrunning Bitcoin lately)
- 30 year mortgage: ~6.6% (what a regular person pays to borrow for a house, still stuck high)
Quick one this week, because honestly the story kind of tells itself. The inflation number we've been waiting on for months finally cooled off, and it cooled off harder than pretty much anyone expected, which is exactly the direction we said things would head once oil started coming back down.
But (and you knew there was a but coming) the timing on it is rough, because that cool number is from June, and the Iran war reignited right at the start of July, which means the exact thing that pulled prices down last month could turn around and shove them right back up this month. So we take the win, we enjoy it, and we keep one eye open while we do. Because with this war, anything can happen.
Here's what actually came out:
- Inflation (CPI): 3.5%, down from 4.2% (how fast prices climbed over the past year, and it's finally slowing)
- Core inflation: 2.6% (same idea, just ignoring gas and food since those two bounce around too much to trust)
- Prices last month: down 0.4% (the biggest one month drop in about six years)
- Gas: down 9.7% (basically the whole reason the number cooled)
- Fed rate: still 3.5% to 3.75% (unchanged again, still no cut, and Warsh made clear he's in no rush and said he will not cut even if that's what Trump wants - but honestly I think he's just allowing things to happen that will lead to cuts anyway.
Chart Update:
Price is still tracking in that channel we talked about ranging from 65k down to potentially 59k. We're still dollar cost averaging by buying a little every week. Nothing big just waiting for our timeline to continue.
--------------------- New Members -----------------------
If you just found us, pretty much everything we talk about each week fits inside one story, a chain of events we laid out months ago that tends to play out in order. Once you can see the whole map, it gets a lot easier to understand why we keep saying now is a fine time to be buying slowly instead of waiting around for perfect news. So here's the sequence, start to finish.
- The war keeps oil expensive. As long as Iran and the Strait of Hormuz stay messy, oil stays high, and since almost everything runs on oil, that keeps prices high across the board.
- The Fed gets stuck. They can't raise rates to fix this, because raising rates doesn't create more oil, it just makes life harder for everyone. And they can't cut rates either, because cutting while prices are hot would pour gas on the fire. So they freeze.
- Regular people get squeezed. Frozen high rates plus high prices means credit cards pile up, folks pick up second jobs, and everybody starts feeling it. This is the painful stretch.
- The job market finally cracks. All that pressure eventually shows up in the numbers, hiring slows, jobs reports come in weak, and the story starts to shift.
- Oil cools, and inflation cools with it. Whenever the war calms down enough for oil to flow again, prices start dropping, and the inflation everyone was panicking about begins to fade.
- The Fed flips its worry. Now that prices are cooling and jobs are weakening, the Fed stops fearing inflation and starts fearing a weak economy, and that's when talk of rate cuts comes back.
- The dollar softens. As those cuts come into view, the super strong dollar that's been crushing everything finally starts to ease off.
- Bitcoin runs. And here's the important part, Bitcoin moves the moment the market believes easier money is coming, well before the cuts actually happen and before the economy even feels better.
So where are we on this map right now?
Honestly, further along than it feels. Steps 1 through 4 already happened, oil stayed high, the Fed froze, people got squeezed, and just this month the job market finally cracked exactly like we said it would. Step 5 even kicked off, since inflation just cooled in the June numbers.
The catch is that the Iran war reignited at the start of July, which threatens to bounce oil and inflation right back up and stall step 5 before we get to the good stuff in steps 6 through 8. The Fed hasn't flipped its worry yet, the dollar is still strong, and Bitcoin is still stuck in its range. So think of us as sitting right at the hinge, where the early signals of the turn are showing up, but the confirmation isn't here yet, and the war is the wildcard that decides how long this last stretch takes.
--------------- Final thoughts ---------------------
So is now a good time to buy?
Here's how I honestly think about it. This boring, uncomfortable middle part, where the signals are quietly turning but the crowd is still scared, is historically the stretch where patient buyers do their best work. That's the whole reason I keep buying small amounts every week instead of trying to guess the exact bottom. This is how I approach it for myself though, not a promise and not financial advice. You know your own situation way better than I do.
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7/16 – Market Update: Inflation Down - BTC/ETH Up - Time to buy?
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