Hormuz has two traffic counts. They are an order of magnitude apart.

No market has traded since Friday afternoon. The weekend produced news anyway, and both pieces are about how hard this war is to measure. An attempt to put one number on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz turned up two separate counts that are an order of magnitude apart. And a bulk carrier in the strait was struck by an unknown projectile late Friday, by early reports the third attack on vessels of Abu Dhabi's national oil company inside two days. The crew is reported safe. The seven-day incident-free clock remains at zero.

The demand side moved too. China's July crude imports rebounded hard off a near-decade low while the available estimate of refinery activity has processing essentially flat. Buying more crude than you burn is what restocking looks like. It is also what stranded cargoes finally arriving look like. Beijing's official refinery figures, scheduled for tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern time, can separate a processing recovery from accumulation; they cannot by themselves say why the accumulation occurred.

One honest caveat, and it is the theme of the issue. Neither count of the strait is solid enough to build on: one tallies only ships broadcasting their position, in a theater where dozens of tankers run dark, and no primary referee was reachable to adjudicate between them. And they do not even cover the same window: one is a single day's reading, the other a weekly average. What the two agree on is that observable traffic remains severely constrained. The Lloyd's count also fell from the preceding week. The map records the conflict between the counts and asserts neither number.

For paying subscribers below: the full regime map, including both Hormuz counts and their incompatible measurement bases; three possible readings of China's July import rebound; Friday's Brent reclaim and gold's fourth qualifying settlement; and tonight's 10 p.m. Eastern refinery release. Each moved lane includes the evidence that changed it, the next observable test, and the condition that would prove it wrong.