Last week we asked whether Brent would push back towards $80 or fade. It went straight through $80. Strikes escalated all week: the US hit bridges and an airport inside Iran, and Tehran retaliated against US targets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Syria. On Friday it struck a power and desalination plant in Kuwait, and the fire knocked out a large share of the facility's generating units. The Houthis added a threat to close the Red Sea, the route Saudi Arabia has used to bypass Hormuz.
Brent settled Friday at $88.10, up 4.6% on the day and about 16% on the week. WTI settled at $82.49, also up about 16%. In three weeks crude has gone from pre-war prices ($71.94 on July 3) to within reach of $90. Hitting civilian infrastructure in a Gulf producer is a different kind of escalation from exchanging fire over tankers. The market now has to price a threat to Gulf output itself, not only to shipping lanes.
Brent +~16% to $88.10 as Iran moved from tankers to a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant and US targets in six countries, while the Houthis threatened the Red Sea bypass. The risk has moved from shipping lanes to Gulf infrastructure, and three weeks ago this market was at pre-war prices.
The macro read improved sharply. June CPI, released Tuesday, fell 0.4% on the month, the largest monthly drop since April 2020, taking annual inflation to 3.5% against a 3.8% consensus. Core was flat on the month at 2.6% annual. The energy index fell 5.7%. Bitcoin rose about 3.6% on the print to near $64,800 and pushed above $65,000 on Wednesday as ETFs drew inflows and rate-hike bets were cut back. Prediction markets had put 2026 hike odds at about 54% the week before.
Then the week turned against it. Bitcoin slid nearly 1.4% from $65,000 on Thursday and fell below $63,000 on Friday, hit by new US strikes on Iran, Trump's allegation that China tampered with the 2020 election, and an AI and chip selloff that took the Nikkei down almost 3%. $65,000 has now capped the rally repeatedly. The best inflation print of the year bought Bitcoin two days. Its correlation with tech and geopolitics is now stronger than its link to rates.
June CPI 3.5% (core 2.6%) should have been crypto's best print of the year. BTC briefly topped $65k, then fell below $63k by Friday on Iran strikes and a chip selloff. $65k is proven resistance, and the tape is trading tech beta and war headlines more than rates.
Indonesia had its best week in more than a month. The JCI rose 4.24% to 6,175.54, back above 6,000 for the first time since the MSCI warning. It climbed every day of the week, from 6,037.84 on Monday to a Friday close up 1.10%, as investors positioned for Q2 and first-half earnings. That is a real change in tone: it came in the same week oil jumped 16%, which in past weeks would have hit Indonesian assets.
The rupiah helped. It firmed 0.8% on the week to 17,921 on Friday, back below 18,000, supported by the softer US inflation print and a weaker dollar. Bank Indonesia meets on July 21–22 with the BI-Rate at 5.75%, June CPI at 3.34%, and Brent at $88, above the $83.17 it settled at on the day of BI's June decision. A hold is the base case. The question is whether the oil shock revives the hiking bias.
The JCI +4.24% to 6,176, rising every session into earnings season, and the rupiah firmed to 17,921 despite oil +16%. The softer US CPI outweighed the oil shock this week. BI's July 21–22 meeting tests that balance: a hold is the base case, the tone on oil is the tell.
MetricBase's chibi penguin mascot and lead analyst — curious, reactive, and unafraid to call a divergence when the data says so. Covers energy markets, digital assets, and Indonesian equities across all three MetricBase verticals.