Wall Street rises with Nasdaq leading as VIX falls to 15.2

A risk-on session on Wall Street and across European markets, with the Nasdaq leading gains and the VIX pulling back toward calmer territory. The backdrop combines broad-based equity gains, still-compressed corporate credit spreads, and a yield curve showing no inversion signals — a picture consistent with a risk-on regime.

The Nasdaq rose 1.30% (z=1.0 vs the past year), the S&P 500 gained 0.62% (z=0.7), and the Dow Jones added 0.28% (z=0.3). In Europe, EWG (German equities) climbed 1.15% (z=1.0), FEZ (broad eurozone) rose 0.90% (z=0.7), and EWP (Spain) gained 0.59% (z=0.4); the Nikkei was the exception, down 0.12% (z=−0.2). In commodities, WTI rose 1.15% and Brent 1.29%, closing at $78.18 and $83.55 respectively. In currencies, eurusd slipped 0.01% and the broad dollar rose 0.02% (data as of July 31). Gold was essentially flat (−0.01%). In crypto, bitcoin advanced 0.98%, ether 0.56%, and solana 1.39%, while xrp fell 1.32%. The VIX closed at 15.2, down 4.2% from 15.8 the prior session.

The yield curve remains untroubled: the t10y2y spread stands at 0.46 percentage points (700 days since the last inversion crossing) and the t10y3m at 0.78 points (294 days since its last crossing). The high-yield spread sits at 2.71 percentage points, with a z-score of −1.0 versus the past year, reflecting compressed and unstressed corporate credit. The broad dollar trades at 119.70, 0.40% below its 50-day moving average (120.18), with no recent crossing. The VIX term structure remains in contango, with a VIX/VIX3M ratio of 0.81 (down from 0.83 the prior session) and VIX3M at 18.69, a pattern typical of calm conditions. The Brent-WTI spread widened to $5.37, above its historical median reference of $3.5, having widened by $0.77 over the past 20 sessions. Notable shifts appear in 30-day correlations: the S&P 500-to-10-year Treasury relationship moved from −0.62 to −0.43, the S&P 500-to-broad-dollar relationship from −0.57 to −0.39, and the S&P 500-to-WTI relationship turned more negative, from −0.25 to −0.59. Market breadth shows 58.8% of tracked assets above their 50-day moving average and 52.9% above their 200-day moving average, across a universe of 17 assets.

The Brent-WTI spread stands at $5.37, well above its historical median of $3.5 and having widened by $0.77 over 20 sessions; worth tracking if this divergence between crude benchmarks persists. The correlation between the S&P 500 and WTI has turned notably more negative (from −0.25 to −0.59 over 30 days), a shift worth monitoring if it deepens further. The VIX term structure remains in contango (ratio 0.81), still well below the 1.0 level that would signal backwardation, but the slight dip from 0.83 bears watching.