Mon-T Weekly Review — w/e 19 Jun 2026

Kevin Warsh held his first press conference as Fed Chair on Wednesday afternoon, held rates steady as expected, hinted the next move could be a rate hike, and announced five task forces to overhaul how the Fed operates. NPR reported the central bank 'signaled its next move could be a rate increase.' Markets, apparently, had already decided they didn't much care. The S&P 500 rallied 1.63%. The Nasdaq surged 3.32%. And crude oil, the desk's favourite punching bag since the Iran ceasefire began unwinding in late May, collapsed another 9.83% to settle near $76.54 as Strait of Hormuz shipping flows continued normalising. Trading Economics confirmed WTI was on track for a weekly decline of around 10%, erasing most of the war-era gains that had defined energy markets since February.

Five directional calls this week, four correct. Eighty percent accuracy at an average confidence of 6.2. The desk picked its spots, committed where conviction existed, and delivered cleanly on crude oil, silver, the S&P, and the Russell 2000. The lone miss was Treasury bonds, called BEARISH at 6/10 ahead of Warsh's debut, which rallied 0.81% as markets apparently interpreted his 'regime change in the conduct of policy' as less immediately threatening than expected. After three consecutive weeks of sub-50% accuracy that had me questioning whether the analytical framework was fit for purpose, this feels like the desk remembering how to play its own game.

The ten NO CALL markets tell their own story, and it is not entirely flattering. The Nasdaq ripped 3.32% while the desk sat on its hands. Wheat surged 3.65%. Platinum fell 2.73%. Sterling dropped 1.34%. I have been writing variations of this paragraph since February, and the pattern holds: the desk's disciplined abstention protects its accuracy percentage at the cost of enormous missed opportunities. But after the 12.5% catastrophe in April and the 40% scorecard three weeks ago, I will take a clean 80% on five calls over a messy 50% on ten, every single time.

Five directional calls this week, with four landing on the right side. The other ten markets got the NO CALL treatment. An 80% directional hit rate is the best since the w/e 10 Feb week that kicked off silver's legendary four-week run, and the confidence calibration was clean: the two highest-conviction calls at 7/10 (Silver BEARISH, Russell BULLISH) both delivered emphatically, while the lone miss came from a 6/10 call on bonds. When your strongest conviction produces your best results, the system is working.

The average confidence of 6.2 represents a meaningful step up from recent weeks where the desk was whispering directional views at 5/10 and hoping nobody noticed. Crude oil's 9.83% bearish win at 5/10 is now the sixth consecutive correct bearish call on energy, a streak that stretches back to late May and has delivered cumulative downside of roughly 35% from the $120 March war peak to current levels near $77. That is the desk's best sustained single-market performance of 2026, and the conviction has been appropriately modest throughout.

The rolling twelve-week figure sits at 56% across 91 directional calls, with 104 no-call abstentions. That engagement split tells you the desk calls direction on fewer than half of all market-weeks, a rate that has been declining since February's 70% pace. This week's 80% helps modestly, but the denominator barely moves when you add only five calls to it. The wartime volatility weeks from April continue to drag the rolling average, though the very worst of the December and January horror shows have now fully aged out of the window. If the desk can increase its directional volume to seven or eight calls while maintaining accuracy above 70%, we should finally see this number climb toward 60%.

The Economic agent had the strongest week across the desk's directional calls. Its identification of the RISK-ON macro regime supporting equities, its bearish energy framework through demand destruction and Strait normalisation, and its reading of the FOMC binary risk as manageable rather than catastrophic all proved directionally useful. On crude oil in particular, the Economic agent's sustained bearish conviction since late May has powered the desk's longest active winning streak of 2026.

The Sentiment agent also earned its keep, with the contrarian setup it identified on the Russell, AAII bears at 47.7% and Fear & Greed at 34, proving to be the precise entry signal for a 2.57% rally. I have spent months criticising the Sentiment agent for being 'too cautious' or 'offering no useful signal.' This week it was the analytical backbone of the MOTW call. Credit where due. The weakest performer was the collective framework on Treasury bonds, where the Economic agent's hawkish FOMC thesis and the Fundamental agent's bearish fiscal deficit narrative were both directionally wrong. Warsh chose caution over confrontation on day one, and the bond disciplines did not price that possibility adequately.

The Russell reconstitution effective date lands on June 26, which means next week is the culmination of the mechanical flows the desk has been positioning for. Whether the index holds above 3000 or experiences sell-the-news exhaustion will be the small-cap story of the month. Crude oil at $77 is rapidly approaching J.P. Morgan's $60 Brent fair value territory, and whether the Hormuz normalisation continues or stalls will determine if the desk's six-week bearish streak extends to seven. The Warsh FOMC aftermath continues to ripple through rates, with markets now pricing genuine hike risk for the first time this cycle. Gold at $4,173, down 26% from January's peak, faces the question of whether the FOMC clarity provides a floor or whether the new hawkish regime pushes it toward $4,000. The desk will have its Sunday views. I expect the NO CALL count to remain elevated through the summer lull.