🔥The Tipping Point pt. 1: By Milton Gladwell
Whales see a push to the abyss, and the market is obliging...
🧨 TIPPING POINT: ALL PUTS NEED IS ONE…LITTLE…PUSH…
There’s a rhythm to the market when something big is coming. Sometimes it's subtle—like a flicker in the VIX, a widening spread, or a soft miss on breath. Other times it’s a full-blown tipping point—one wrong bounce and everything’s on the floor.
We might be in one of those moments right now.
1. The U.S. Strike on Iran: A Geopolitical Powder Keg
Late-breaking headlines confirmed that U.S. forces struck an Iranian nuclear site. The event isn’t just symbolic—it has the potential to reset the risk table globally. If Iran chooses to retaliate (and historically, they do), markets may need to price in:
Oil supply disruptions via the Strait of Hormuz
Direct or proxy military responses in the region
Escalation risk dragging in global powers or spiking defense and commodity volatility
It's not just that something happened—it’s that it happened after weeks of planning. The President himself admitted as much. That means any moves we’re seeing in SPY and ES are reacting to a trigger that some participants already saw coming.
1B. Core PCE and the Fed’s "Whatever Happens Next"
Layered atop the macro tension is June 27th's Core PCE release. Powell’s most recent remarks made it crystal clear: policy pivots are data-dependent, especially in this "highly uncertain" inflationary moment.
He emphasized that the Fed won’t know how tariffs and external price shocks (like oil) truly affect inflation until now—Q3 prints, starting with PCE. In other words, if Core PCE ticks hot, the market will have to start reconsidering its soft-landing dream.
2. The Gap Chain Reaction: A Slippery Slope
ES has been dancing over multiple air pockets—gap zones that never fully resolved. We won’t pretend to know exactly which one gives first (or if they all will), but what’s clear is this:
Once one starts filling, others often follow.
Liquidity dries up.
Market structure starts to matter.
‼ Then….momentum takes over.
Call it dominoes, call it gravity. Either way, the slope gets slippery.
