Federal Reserve's Harker: May Temporarily Hold Rates Steady

Economists forecast that against the backdrop of renewed Middle East conflict and another surge in energy prices, the Bank of England will adopt a hawkish stance at this week’s meeting while keeping interest rates unchanged. Since the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)’s last meeting in June, the collapse of the US-Iran ceasefire has pushed global oil prices back to near $100 per barrel, with European natural gas prices surging to their highest level since the start of the conflict. Oil prices could rise further if shipping lanes in the Gulf remain disrupted. The UK economy performed better than the MPC’s expectations in the early stage of the conflict, with GDP growing by 0.7% in the three months to May. There are few signs so far that the energy shock will trigger more persistent price pressures. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) has undershot expectations for three consecutive months, falling to 2.6% in June. Wage growth, a key source of inflationary pressure, has slowed, while food price increases have also eased. Economists say this will enable the MPC to hold interest rates at 3.75% at its Thursday meeting, while signaling it is prepared to tighten policy if energy prices rise sharply further or if one-off price shocks start to become more persistent.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, a whale address starting with 0xa314 adjusted its positions to go long WTI and short Brent crude after oil prices rallied, executing a cross-commodity pair trade totaling roughly $15 million, likely betting WTI would maintain its prior relative strength. Between July 14 and 23, WTI and Brent on Hyperliquid rose approximately 16.4% and 13.1% respectively, with WTI significantly outperforming its peer. The whale then opened around 91,000 WTI long positions and expanded Brent short positions to roughly 100,000 contracts. However, after geopolitical risks eased, both crude grades fell in tandem, with WTI’s decline slightly outpacing Brent’s, causing the pair trade to fail to deliver expected returns. Due to the higher entry cost of WTI long positions, their losses exceeded the gains from Brent short positions. As of press time, the whale holds 86,000 WTI long positions and 90,000 Brent short positions, with the two legs of the trade totaling approximately $15.1464 million. Of this, WTI long positions carry an unrealized loss of around $611,600, while Brent short positions have an unrealized gain of roughly $198,000. Combined with previously realized position reduction losses of $45,900 and funding fees of $15,000, this round of WTI-Brent spread trading has accumulated a total loss of approximately $444,400. This address is not exclusively focused on crude oil; historical records show it initially concentrated trading on semiconductor and storage assets including NVDA, DRAM, MU, and SNDK, while also participating in index contracts such as the S&P 500 and XYZ100, with historical profits of $8.6 million. — HyperInsight Bot is now live. Add @HyperInsightBot to your Telegram group and set it as an admin (enable message sending permission) to automatically sync on-chain news.

According to CCTV News, local time on July 27, an informed Iranian official disclosed that six unauthorized vessels shut down their navigation and positioning systems in the early hours of that day, attempting to illegally cross a dangerous waterway south of the Strait of Hormuz at the instigation of the United States. One of the vessels was involved in an accident, while the rest were escorted back to the Persian Gulf under Iranian control.

According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, SoftBank Group has attracted 21 new lenders to the broader syndication phase of the $40 billion bridge loan it raised to invest in OpenAI. The insiders said these new lenders collectively secured roughly $70 billion of the loan facility, with First Abu Dhabi Bank, Singapore’s Government Investment Corporation, and Standard Chartered each subscribing for nearly $10 billion. The remaining portion of the new funds was allocated to banks in parts of Europe, Japan, and Taiwan, China. The insiders added that the remaining $330 billion of the bridge loan is currently held by underwriters and senior lenders, though it may undergo further syndication in the future.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (Twitter handle @ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, a whale has withdrawn another 120 WBTC (valued at approximately $7.8 million) from a trading platform over the past two hours. As of now, the whale has accumulated positions of 59,404.19 ETH and 820 WBTC, with a total value of $156 million, average cost bases of roughly $1,742 and $64,329 respectively, and an aggregate unrealized profit of $8.927 million.

，据官方公告，Bithumb 将上线 GEOD/韩元交易对。