I just got back from Spain.
I took my laptop. Best intentions and all that. The reality? I got almost nothing done — and the reason was simple. I had mates with me, and when someone's asking if you fancy another beer at 2 in the afternoon, the charts don't stand much of a chance.
Here's the thing though. I got into trading because I love the idea of working from anywhere in the world. Beach, bar, wherever. That freedom is the whole point. But freedom doesn't mean switching your brain off completely, and Spain taught me that the balance between work and play is something I still need to figure out.
Case in point — I missed the Fed meeting while I was away. It landed on Wednesday — I wasn't properly focused, and by the time I came up for air, I was reacting to price rather than understanding the context. Closed my positions. A few hours later, the market pushed back up. Classic. That's not analysis. That's reacting to a number on a screen without context, which is exactly what I tell people not to do.
So here's where I've landed. I'm not going to be glued to a screen 24 hours a day — that's not a life. But I need to be more intentional about when I'm working and when I'm not. You're either assessing the market properly or you're not assessing it at all. There's no useful middle ground.
Which brings me to why I'm here.
I trade the right way for me. Top down. Sector rotation. Finding strength in trending stocks and managing risk properly. It takes real work — screening, analysis, building a case before I put a penny on the line. Some people ask why I bother sharing it if I'm already making money. Fair question. The honest answer is I want to build a community of traders who think like I do. People who want to swap ideas, challenge each other, and actually get better. And yeah — a lot of work goes into this, so if you find value in it, a small contribution helps keep it going.
This is Omera Trading. Let's get into it.
The Strait of Hormuz: Noise We Have to Navigate
Four months of war, a fragile interim agreement, and within days Iran says it is closing the strait again. And the market? Barely flinched.
That tells you everything you need to know about where we are right now.
The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Through that gap flows about 20% of global oil flows, a quarter of global LNG, and 30% of internationally traded fertilisers. When it closed in March the IEA called it the "largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market." Brent surged over 50%. Dubai crude briefly hit $166. US gas crossed $5 a gallon.
And yet here we are. Industrials up 4.59% last week. Tech up 3.95%. Markets near record highs. The catastrophic scenarios never fully materialised — bypass pipelines, strategic reserve releases, and workarounds kept the world moving — and the market has spent four months conditioning itself to fade every headline. Each escalation produced a smaller reaction than the last. By the time Iran re-declared the strait closed on June 20th, the S&P barely blinked.
Right now, US and Iranian negotiators are in Switzerland trying to hold the MOU together. Vance is calling it historic. Iran's team arrived demanding the US implement commitments before talks properly begin. Israel is still striking Lebanon. Hezbollah — who aren't party to any of this — are the wildcard nobody can control. Trump is threatening to bomb Iran again while his VP sits across the table from Iranian officials.
It's chaotic. It will move markets on individual days. But as trend traders, we know what our job is — and it isn't chasing geopolitical headlines at midnight.
This week, the Hormuz situation is noise we have to navigate. Watch it from a distance. Let the diplomats do their thing. The real story this week sits somewhere else entirely.
The Real Test: Micron Earnings Wednesday
Here's the thing about semiconductors that drives me mad. You've got people on Twitter, TikTok, wherever, telling you this can't continue. It's going to end. It's all going to blow up. And when you ask them why — actual reasons, not vibes — they've got nothing. It's a limiting belief dressed up as analysis.
Look at Micron. Micron's earnings expectations have exploded higher as AI memory demand has accelerated. Companies are raising billions specifically to buy more chips. The demand isn't slowing — it's accelerating. And yet some bloke with 100k followers is telling you to get out.
The dot-com comparison gets thrown around a lot and it's lazy. Back then, we were valuing companies at 80-90 times future earnings on made-up metrics — daily eyeballs, page views, whatever nonsense justified the price. There were no earnings. This is different. The earnings are real, they're growing, and they keep beating estimates. Until that changes, the trend doesn't change. Simple as that.
Micron reports on Wednesday. This is the number that matters most to me this week — more than anything coming out of Switzerland, more than FedEx Tuesday, possibly even more than PCE Thursday.
Why? Because Micron is a direct read on whether the AI infrastructure demand story is still intact. The thesis is straightforward: AI buildout requires memory. Lots of it. Data centres keep expanding. Hyperscalers keep spending. Micron keeps winning. If those numbers come in strong — revenue growth, margin expansion, forward guidance that reflects continued AI-driven demand — it validates the entire semiconductor thesis and the tech leadership of the last twelve months continues.
If they miss, or worse, guide cautiously — that's a different conversation. That's the kind of print that could finally give the bears the ammunition they've been looking for. Not proof that the AI story is over, but enough doubt to shake positioning and trigger a proper sector rotation.
This is why we do the work. You don't need to know the exact day the trend ends. You need to understand why it's happening — so you recognise when the conditions actually shift rather than panicking every time someone on social media tells you the sky is falling.
The conditions for the semiconductor trend are: real earnings, accelerating demand, companies actively raising capital to buy more chips. Until those conditions change, the trend doesn't change. Wednesday tells us whether those conditions are still in place.
The Week Ahead: What I'm Watching
Beyond Micron, the week has a few other things worth flagging.
FedEx — Tuesday. A proxy on global trade volumes. Four months of supply chain disruption from the Hormuz closure will show up here. The guidance on forward demand matters — if the world's biggest logistics company is seeing volumes fall, that's a broader warning signal worth taking seriously.
PCE Inflation — Thursday. The first major inflation print under Kevin Warsh's new Fed framework. After his hawkish debut at the June meeting — nine of nineteen policymakers pencilling in at least one rate hike before year end — this number carries more weight than usual. A hot print Thursday is a headwind for the relief rally regardless of what happens in Switzerland. Don't forget the Fed is still in the room.
Switzerland — all week. I'll be watching for any concrete language on Lebanon specifically. Vague optimism on the nuclear question doesn't move markets. A clear agreement — or a clear breakdown — does. But I'm not building trades around it. Too unpredictable, too fast-moving, too many actors who can blow it up without warning.
Should You Even Be Trading This Week?
As trend traders, we try to ignore the noise. But this week the noise is unusually loud and unusually unpredictable.
Switzerland talks could produce a breakthrough or a collapse on any given day. FedEx could reprice the global trade outlook Tuesday. Micron could validate or shake the entire tech thesis Wednesday. PCE could change the rate narrative Thursday. And sitting underneath all of it, Hezbollah could do something in Lebanon on any night of the week that sends everything sideways.
Every one of those is a potential direction change. All in the same five-day window.
When news flow is this dense, markets don't trend — they whip. Money rotates from sector to sector chasing headlines. Energy spikes on bad Switzerland news, dumps when Vance sounds optimistic, spikes again when Trump posts something at midnight. That's not a trend. That's noise with a price tag.
My money's on existing leadership holding — Tech isn't done. But the volatility will be hard to navigate. Micron Wednesday is the real test. Strong earnings, the trend continues. As for all the other noise, I think it's best to watch from a distance. My mood may change considerably by tomorrow — that's volatility.
I got burned in Spain doing exactly what I'm warning you about. Saw the market moving, didn't have the full picture, reacted instead of analysed, and paid for it. Don't make the same mistake this week.
If you are trading: small size. Clear levels. Hard stops. If a position doesn't make sense in five seconds of calm thinking, it probably doesn't make sense at all.
Watch the week develop. Let the market show its hand. Then act.
I'll be posting updates as the week unfolds — starting with Micron Wednesday.
As I write this on Sunday night, the truth is nobody knows what happens next. It's a guessing game until the market opens and shows us where the money is actually flowing.
I'm not interested in predicting — I'm interested in reacting. I'll watch how the market digests everything, then break down the companies on our watchlist where I think the best opportunities could be this week.
