The first week of August is formally here. In terms of how the calendar falls, the opening week of a month tends to have an outsized effect on volatility in US trading, chiefly because the US non-farm payrolls report — the release markets watch most closely — lands early in the month. In a market as rate-sensitive as the current one, payrolls feed straight into rate expectations and therefore into a wider trading range. On top of that, the weekend's US–Iran flare-up has left the progress of the “so-called” 60-day negotiation window genuinely hard to read, and that is another source of instability in the market right now. A market like this, however, is actually easier to profit from — provided you approach it with a relatively short-term mindset. $Inve