Supertanker Millions 💰, Samsung's AI Surge 🤖, German Crypto Boost 🚀

South Korea, Taiwan, and the Netherlands were the top-performing international markets during the first half of 2026, while Indonesia, China, and India ranked among the weakest. @MacroMicroMe

China's Real Estate Market has erased all gains from the last 20 years

BREAKING: US technology funds attracted +$14.3 billion in inflows in the week ending July 1st, the 2nd biggest weekly inflow on record. This follows -$9.3 billion in outflows the prior week and a record +$19.2 billion in inflows two weeks earlier. This brings the 4-week average of weekly inflows to a record +$9.0 billion. Tech funds are now on pace to attract +$152 billion in inflows in 2026, an all-time high. Meanwhile, US equity funds recorded -$17.2 billion in outflows in the week ending July 1st, the largest weekly withdrawal since March. Investors are aggressively rotating into technology.

US data center construction reached another new record high in official data released today, hitting a pace of nearly $60B/yr (and this only includes data center facilities, not the expensive computers within) Spending's up 23% over the last year and 328% since ChatGPT's launch

America's COVID-era warehouse boom is truly over—real US warehouse construction has fallen to the lowest level since 2019 in official data released today It's down nearly 40% since its 2023 peak and is down 10% over the last year alone

2. The murder rate is at the lowest level since 1900.

Some fun charts: 1. Each US generation is wealthier than the last.

US debt issuance is a stunning 7% of GDP. That's our budget deficit, which keeps ramping up even though our public debt is higher than it's been in a very long time. Fiscal is out of control. No way the Fed can reduce its balance sheet with this going on. https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/can-the-fed-shrink-its-balance-sheet

Bank loans to Private Credit and PE firms are up +325% since 2015, outpacing any other loan type

The Shit Returns Coming on All This AI Capex AI revenues have finally overtaken depreciation, a very low bar. Getting even a decent return on all the capex planned requires the recent 100% revenue growth rate to accelerate over the next 5 years. https://bobeunlimited.substack.com/p/the-shit-returns-coming-on-all-this

🇪🇺 🇨🇳 🇯🇵 Chinese automakers overtake Japanese rivals in Europe despite EV tariffs - Nikkei Asia https://asia.nikkei.com/business/automobiles/chinese-automakers-overtake-japanese-rivals-in-europe-despite-ev-tariffs

🗺️ Three small regions concentrate 50% of the global GDP

Countries With the Highest Percentage of Male Population 👨 This graphic by Harris Saleem is one of the many incredible data-driven charts and stories from creators featured on our @VoronoiApp. ✅ https://www.voronoiapp.com/people/Countries-With-the-Highest-Percentage-of-Male-Population-4968

What is happening with the US construction sector? The hiring rate in US construction fell -0.3 percentage points in May, to 3.5%, the lowest since data began in 2000. Since January, this figure has declined -1.1 percentage points, extending its 4-year downtrend. By comparison, the 2008 Financial Crisis and 2020 pandemic lows were 4.5% and 3.7%, respectively. This comes as 295,000 new workers were hired in the construction sector in May, the 3rd-lowest monthly total since the 2020 pandemic. Excluding 2020, this is the 3rd-lowest reading in 10 years. US construction hiring is historically weak.

🚨 The real warning signal for AI may not come from the tech giants but from their customers. ➡️ For now, the infrastructure sellers continue to capture most of the value but the sectors expected to use AI heavily are not yet showing a spectacular acceleration in earnings. Normally, AI should allow companies to improve productivity, reduce costs, expand margins and ultimately grow profits. However, at this stage, we can clearly see the revenues of those selling the promise but much less the economic gains of those buying it. ⚠️ That does not mean AI is a bubble as productivity gains take time but the market will gradually start asking for proof. Not just announcements, speeches or AI partnerships, but visible results in the numbers with higher margins, stronger cash flow and faster earnings growth. If the promise remains concentrated among compute sellers, the market may eventually question whether the spending is truly justified. This is not a crash signal but it is clearly a signal to stay vigilant. *FT link: https://www.ft.com/content/19fa80bb-1c8e-44ac-bfba-ba8da321be6d?syn-25a6b1a6=1

🇺🇸 🌎 The AI Trade Is Losing One of Its Key Signals - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-03/the-ai-trade-is-losing-one-of-its-key-signals-taking-stock

The US tech sector continues bleeding jobs—American tech sector employment is down 49k over the last year in data released this morning. That's nearly as bad as the worst of the 2024 tech-cession, and significantly worse than either the 2008 or 2020 recessions

🇦🇪 The UAE's non-oil private sector lost further momentum in June, with the S&P Global UAE PMI falling to 50.8 from 52.6, its weakest reading since February 2021. Output growth slowed to a five-year low, while employment contracted for the first time in more than four years and at the fastest pace since August 2020.

🚢 Global container shipping rates continued to surge this week, with the Drewry World Container Index (WCI) rising +9% WoW to $4,530. The increase was driven by further gains across both the Transpacific and Asia–Europe trade routes. The broader container market remains supported by early peak season demand and elevated shipping costs linked to geopolitical risks. While the interim US–Iran agreement has helped restore vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, security concerns remain elevated following the suspension of ship escort operations after an attack on a containership near Oman.

Oil is cheaper than it was 20 years ago JPMAM

Daily count of tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

🇷🇺 Russia is sitting on $75 trillion in natural resources and runs an economy smaller than Texas.

There's endless questions about what's going on with gold and why it's traded as poorly as it has in the past 3 months. But here it seems like gold has bottomed. Real rates are double what they were before the war. That just makes very little sense... https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/why-has-gold-fallen-so-much

🇺🇸 The GENIUS Act did more than regulate stablecoins. It opened a land grab. USDT and USDC own the past. The lane that opened in 2026 is institutional dollar settlement, and the fastest mover into it launched barely a year ago. Most rank stablecoins by market cap. In 2026 that is the vanity metric. USD1 is roughly the fifth largest dollar token, yet turns over close to half its supply every day. Highest velocity of any major stablecoin. Size stopped being the point. Let me explain what actually changed this year. 📈 THE METRIC EVERYONE STILL GETS WRONG The whole market obsesses over the leaderboard. Tether near 186 billion, USDC near 76 billion, and a wide gap before anyone else. That ranking tells you who parked the most dollars. It tells you almost nothing about who is moving them. The number that matters now is velocity. How many times does a token actually change hands. Stablecoins processed around 46 trillion dollars in 2025, more than 20 times PayPal and closing on 3 times Visa. The rails got real. In that world a coin that sits idle is worth less than a smaller coin that never stops moving. 🏛️ WHAT THE GENIUS ACT ACTUALLY DID People treated it as a compliance headache. It was a starting gun. Signed July 18, 2025, it gave dollar pegged stablecoins a federal definition as payment instruments and set reserve and disclosure rules, with final implementation landing July 18, 2026. Two things followed. Offshore liquidity stayed with USDT for global retail and high frequency trading. And a brand new onshore lane opened for regulated dollar settlement, payroll, corporate treasury. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union all launched or piloted stablecoin settlement, treating it as infrastructure rather than an experiment. That is the lane the incumbents were not built to defend, because they were built for a pre regulation world. ⚙️ THE CLEANEST EXAMPLE OF THE NEW MODEL $USD1 World Liberty Financial Launched March 2025. Custodied by BitGo, backed by cash and short term Treasuries, live across 11 plus chains. What makes it a useful case study is not the ticker, it is the design choice. It was built compliance first and wired into distribution from day one, listing on Binance and Coinbase early instead of begging for liquidity later. Then the settlement wins arrived. A 2 billion dollar investment by Abu Dhabi based MGX into Binance was settled in USD1, one of the largest stablecoin settled transaction in crypto history. Binance folded USD1 into major spot pairs and converted its BUSD collateral into USD1 at 1 to 1. A tie up with Apex Group, a firm servicing over 3.5 trillion dollars in assets, opened the door to tokenized asset flows. None of that is retail hype. It is plumbing. USD1 runs the highest volume to market cap ratio of any major stablecoin, close to half its supply turning over daily. And lately its order books have been running deeper than USDC's. You do not fake either of those with a marketing budget. Somebody is settling with it. 🎯 FINAL THOUGHTS The last cycle rewarded whoever could park the most idle dollars. This one rewards whoever can move them, under rules that let banks and payment networks plug in without legal risk. Market cap is becoming a backward looking scoreboard. Turnover is the leading one. Watch the velocity leaders, not the size leaders. The dollar that moves fastest onchain tends to be the one institutions quietly standardized on before the rest of the market caught up. Which metric are you actually tracking when you judge a stablecoin now, size or settlement volume?

Bitcoin touched its power law floor in 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2022. Every single touch was a generational bottom. Every single touch felt like death at the time.