Market Pulse
Third straight week in the green, but Friday closed red. The S&P 500 finished at 7,785.76, down 13.23 points or 0.2%. The Nasdaq slipped to 26,729.16, down 0.3%, and the Dow to 53,732.41, down 0.2%. Markets were shut over the weekend, so this is still Friday’s close. Three consecutive weekly gains held, even though all three indexes drifted lower on the final day.
Gold at $4,375 an ounce. Up 0.6% on Friday, briefly above 4,380 intraday, a second straight week higher. Up 7.8% on the month and 31.2% on the year. The annual number matters more here than the daily move.
Oil is holding high. Brent at $88.52 a barrel, up 1.67%, WTI at 82.40, up 1.42%. Against the level before the US and Israeli war with Iran, Brent is roughly 16% more expensive.
The dollar index sits near 99.8, a second session lower and down almost 11% over the year. Traders are trimming their bets on a September rate hike, and the dollar feels it first. Bitcoin is at $62.9k, essentially flat over 24 hours. The US ten-year yield is 4.68%, the two-year 4.17%.
Lithuania & Baltics
The government rejected liberalising the arms trade. MPs Lukas Savickas and Saulius Skvernelis proposed easing conditions for manufacturers to operate on the international market and allowing trade in foreign companies’ weaponry. An assessment prepared by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation says that loosening control of category A weapons without matching safeguards would not serve national security interests. Responsibility for vetting deals would fall on state institutions rather than intermediaries. The defence industry wants to grow faster than the state is ready to supervise it.
Lithuania will submit its request for the next tranche of the SAFE loan by the end of September. The total contract value is nearly €6.4 billion, with a first advance payment of €956 million. The money goes to forming a division, ammunition stockpiles and counter-mobility measures. The loans carry a ten-year grace period, so only interest is paid at first. Officials stress that receiving SAFE funds and the Defence Ministry procurement programme are not directly linked, because purchases are made from budget appropriations.
Debunk.org study: pro-Kremlin media has not called off its campaign against Lithuania. More than 1,500 Russian-language publications from January 2025 to June 2026 were analysed. As balloon flights dropped off after the US and Belarus agreement, the story reversed direction and Lithuania is now cast as the saboteur of that deal. The same channels quietly skip over the renewed drone flights. At the same time, Moscow is preparing claims against the Baltic states at the International Court of Justice over alleged violations of Russian speakers’ rights. Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry says it sees no concrete signs that a claim will be filed and treats this as a propaganda move.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs addressed the public in Aglona. Speaking on Assumption Day, he said Latvia has to be defended both physically and spiritually. Wreckage from a drone shot down on Friday was destroyed in controlled detonations in northern Latvia on Saturday. The type still has not been named publicly. Yesterday the question was whether the incident would be called an error or a provocation. So far it is being called neither.
Europe
Donald Tusk: Poland’s army will soon be the largest in Europe. He said it on 15 August at the biggest military parade in Polish history, with around 1,800 troops, over 300 vehicles and more than 60 aircraft. Defence spending runs near 5% of GDP, with a target of half a million troops. Yesterday that looked like 220,000 soldiers now and 500,000 someday. Today the someday is already being presented as the near future.
Belgium is dealing with the largest fire in its history. The blaze has burned 2,700 hectares in the High Fens reserve, nearly double the area lost in the 2011 fire. Belgium activated the EU civil protection mechanism, and Czechia, Sweden and the Netherlands sent helicopters and firefighting aircraft. Peat bogs and pine forest are burning. Fire tore through the same place in 1911 during a similar drought.
Catania airport has reopened. Flights resumed on Sunday after almost a week under ash from Etna that reached Malta and Libya. Around 700 flights were cancelled, the airport’s worst disruption in more than two decades. The Rhine, the Danube, and now a volcano and a fire. This summer, European logistics is not losing to competitors.
Ukraine
Kyiv says it has disrupted operations at seven of ten Wildberries logistics centres. At least 20 of the company’s warehouses have been hit since 18 July, the most recent ones burning in the Voronezh region and in Yekaterinburg, 1,400 km from Moscow. The network moves roughly half of Russia’s retail goods, about €66 billion a year. Volodymyr Zelensky says the same logistics network was used to supply drone components and navigation equipment.
Russian oil refining fell to 3.6 million barrels a day in July, the lowest level since May 2002. The Salavat plant was shut down after a strike and repairs could take up to six months. Fuel rationing, queues at petrol stations and export restrictions have grown from a regional headache into a systemic problem.
The front logged 212 combat clashes on 15 August, mostly in the Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk directions. Overnight, 85 drones and three guided aviation missiles were shot down. Russia is pushing for Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last large cities in the Donetsk region still in Ukrainian hands. Ceasefire talks were nowhere before and they are nowhere now.
Geopolitics
Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will soon be declared US territory. He spoke on 14 August in Garden City, New York. The wording was that it would happen “pretty quickly” once Iran is defeated. Iran’s deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi replied that the strait “was, is and will remain Iranian” and that nobody takes it “with a message, an aircraft carrier, an executive order or a campaign speech”.
What the numbers say. In early August, between 8 and 15 ships a day passed through the strait, against roughly 130 before the war. War risk insurance has jumped from 0.25% of hull value to 3% or even 10%. A tanker worth $100 million now pays between $3 and $10 million instead of $250,000. Tehran says it will not reopen the strait until Washington eases sanctions and pays compensation for the war.
Iran’s military chief has reportedly put a bounty on US troops. Media report that Amir Hatami promised $30,000 for every US soldier killed or captured. There is no official confirmation, so for now this is a report rather than a fact. If it holds up, it is rhetoric turned into a price list.
Israel struck southern Lebanon and killed at least 11 people. Two strikes hit Deir al-Zahrani and Ansar, roughly 55 km from the border. A senior Hezbollah commander was killed. Israel says it responded to a ceasefire violation, while Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam calls it an escalation and a matter of exceptional importance. That area had not been struck since the ceasefire two months ago.
Kazakhstan is considering shipping oil to Europe via Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium route carries more than 80% of Kazakh exports and about 2% of global supply, and July drone attacks in the Black Sea halted loading at Novorossiysk several times. KazMunayGas plans to pump 31% more through the Baku, Tbilisi and Ceyhan pipeline this year, up to 1.7 million tonnes. The Baku and Supsa pipeline and the port of Batumi are also under consideration. One strait is closed, a pipeline is under fire, and logistics is rearranging itself toward the expensive end.
What to Watch Tomorrow
Asian markets opening after Trump’s statement. If Brent breaks $90, inflation forecasts get rewritten within days.
Whether the report on Iranian bounties holds up. It decides whether Washington answers militarily or with sanctions.
The Belgian fire and the EU mechanism. Whether more forces are requested and whether the fire reaches settlements.
Russia’s fuel market. Whether rationing spreads beyond individual regions.
The Seimas position on the arms trade. The government said no, but the bill stays in parliament and the autumn session will show how much that no actually weighs.
The Bear’s Take
Hormuz has been closed since the end of February, oil is 16% more expensive than before the war, gold is up 31% on the year, the dollar is down 11%, and the S&P 500 is sitting a dozen points short of a record. Which of these two sets of numbers is lying? The same question applies at home, where a family needs €3,500 in hand for a comfortable life, the poverty line for four is €1,468, and the state is borrowing €6.4 billion for defence with a ten-year grace period. All of those bills arrive together.
Sources
Reuters, CNBC, Al Jazeera, France 24, Euronews, Gulf News, Kyiv Independent, The Moscow Times, LSM, LRT, BNS, 15min, Debunk.org, Trading Economics, Astana Times, Caspian Policy Center, Government of the Republic of Lithuania, General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
I write what I see and nothing beyond it. What you do with it in your own account is your business.