WTI and Brent crude briefly rose nearly $0.80 intraday; currently WTI $81.81/bbl, Brent $87.50/bbl.

Hoisington data show the Fed's Treasury holdings rose about $290bn from December 2025 to end-June 2026, a seven-month increase approaching the roughly $320bn seen during the pandemic; total holdings are at a record high. The rise partly reflects reserve-management purchases to keep reserves ample and partly reinvestment of maturing MBS principal — the latter reshapes asset mix rather than equivalently expanding the balance sheet. The NY Fed began reserve-management purchases at $40bn/month and trimmed them to $10bn/month by summer. NY Fed research concludes these buys have raised demand for short-term debt, eased repo-market stress and marginally lowered short-end funding costs, but are far smaller than 2020 QE, when the Fed bought nearly $2trn of medium- and long-term Treasuries. The flow indicates only that runoff has ended and the Fed is again a material buyer of short-dated debt; it does not constitute QE or yield-curve control.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board said on the 17th it recorded 4.5 million visitor arrivals to Hong Kong in July, up 3% YoY.