Thank God the war’s back on, otherwise we might be set up for a rather boring week.

The US macro calendar’s all but empty, there’s no Fed speak (policymakers are in the self-imposed quiet period ahead of the July 29 FOMC meeting) and the majority of mega-tech earnings aren’t until later this month.

Woe is the macro-market documentarian compelled to suffer a data-less void during peak vacation season. But a rekindled shooting war should keep things a modicum of interesting. God is indeed great. Allahu Akbar. Or, as the locals say it, “Allahu Akbaaaaaahhhahhahhahhaaaaar!!!!!!” (Is that offensive? I’m never sure. All I know is it’s funny. Unless you hear it while driving a Humvee through Fallujah. Then it’s a bell tolling your death.)

Anyway, when I said the data calendar’s empty stateside, I meant it. Preliminary reads on S&P Global’s PMIs and new home sales (both on Friday) are the only notable releases, and I use the term “notable” very loosely. Earnings from Alphabet, on Wednesday, are the biggest scheduled market event. Tesla reports that afternoon as well.

I hope Alphabet underwhelms so I can buy it. It’s down 15% or so from the May intraday highs, but that’s not enough of a concession for me, particularly not in the context of a borrowing spree that’s seen the company sell $70 billion in debt across half a dozen currencies since November, and $80 billion in equity.

As for Tesla, I don’t give a damn what they report. But for those who do, I’ll remind you that Elon delivered more cars than expected last quarter.

A day later (i.e., on Thursday), Christine Lagarde will almost surely refrain from a second consecutive rate hike. Last month, the ECB became the first G7 central bank to raise rates as a result of the war.

Since then, Donald Trump’s ended the conflict more times than anyone, including AI, can count. As Gemini put it Sunday, when queried, “he has claimed the war was over, won, or that a peace deal was imminent between 30 and 40+ times.”

Spoiler alert: It’s not over, it is or isn’t won depending on who you ask and the peace deal he signed became null and void earlier this month.

Dead Americans have long been a red line for Trump, which means the two servicemembers killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan likely presage an even more aggressive US air campaign against IRGC targets in the days ahead.

Pentagon officials who spoke to The New York Times on Sunday said Trump’s “sending more warplanes to the Mideast” including F-16s from Germany and F-35s from Britain. “Additional aerial refueling aircraft are also on the way,” the same linked article noted.

Separately, the Times quoted a concerned resident in Bushehr province, who assessed that, “Much of the world is so immersed in their own lives that the destruction happening in Iran no longer seems important to them.” That’s correct. And Trump knows it. Which means… well, different things for different people. For Iranians, both combatants and civilians, it means more death.

For the ECB, it means “back to square one,” as Greek central bank chief Yannis Stournaras put it earlier this month. The peace deal “could have led to higher growth and lower inflation compared to previous forecasts [but] hostilities started again,” Stournaras sighed, at an event in Athens on July 10.

On Saturday, Mojtaba Khamenei (or what’s left of him) issued a lengthy harangue to mark the end of a national mourning period for his slain father. It was replete with references to the “Great Satan” and contained all sorts of bombastic threats.

A few hours later, Sean Parnell, Pete Hegseth’s PR guy, offered a more succinct message of retribution. “If you kill Americans we will HUNT YOU DOWN without apology and without hesitation AND WE WILL KILL YOU,” he said.