Last week, markets tried to believe the worst was over.
📰 Oil crashed on Thursday, 17 April, after Iran said the Strait of Hormuz was open again. Brent settled at $90.38 and WTI at $83.85, both posting their biggest daily drops since 8 April. Gold pushed higher at the same time, with spot gold around $4,861 by Friday, 17 April, while Wall Street took the reopening story and ran with it — the S&P 500 closed at a record 7,126.06, and the Nasdaq at a record 24,468.48, its longest winning streak since 1992. The dollar softened, the euro climbed, and USDJPY pulled back as traders unwound part of the geopolitical panic they had been pricing in.
But by Sunday, 19 April, that calm already looked fragile.
Reports that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz had halted again after Iran reasserted control over the waterway, with major gaps still remaining in talks with the United States. Iran linked the renewed closure to the continued U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, while Donald Trump said progress had been made but there was still no final deal. That is the real backdrop for the week ahead: not peace, not a clean ceasefire, and not a market with certainty — just a market that bounced hard on relief and now has to decide whether that relief came too early.
That is why this week is not really about one headline. It is about whether markets were right to price de-escalation so aggressively. If Hormuz remains unstable, then oil stays at the centre. And once oil is back at the centre, everything else connects again: inflation, central banks, currencies, gold, and equities. One story, many markets.
📝 That is the lens for everything below. We are not just watching charts this week. We are watching whether oil disruption becomes temporary noise — or the start of a bigger inflation and policy problem again.
🛢️ OIL (WTI & Brent)
[Left] WTI (USOIL) & BRENT (UKOIL) [Right] Daily Chart
Last week showed just how emotional this market is right now. When traders believed Hormuz was reopening and a deal was getting closer, crude collapsed. But that move was built on confidence that supply disruption was fading. If Sunday’s developments are the start of renewed shipping stress rather than a brief setback, then oil can quickly reclaim its geopolitical premium.
Around 20% of global oil shipments normally move through Hormuz, which is why even partial disruption matters so much.
For the week ahead, oil is the key market to monitor because it decides the tone for everything else.
Bullish oil case: Hormuz remains unstable, tanker traffic stays disrupted, and traders rebuild a risk premium into both Brent and WTI. In that case, Brent likely stays the cleaner geopolitical benchmark because it reflects global seaborne supply risk more directly.
Bearish oil case: Talks resume, shipping normalises, and the market starts treating last week’s collapse as the beginning of a larger unwind in war premium.
What matters most: not whether there is one positive headline, but whether there is sustained proof that supply is safe again. One good headline can knock oil lower for a day. It takes much more than that to restore trust in a route this important.
The real message here is simple: if oil starts rising again, markets will stop celebrating diplomacy and start repricing inflation.
⚜️ XAUUSD — Gold
By Friday, 17 April, gold was already strong, helped by a weaker dollar and lower oil after the temporary Hormuz reopening story. Gold Spot was reported at $4,861.32, up more than 2% on the week, with analysts saying a softer oil and inflation backdrop revived hopes for future rate cuts. That is why gold rose even while risk sentiment improved — because lower oil briefly reduced one of the biggest arguments for higher-for-longer rates.
But this week is different. If Hormuz fears come back and oil starts climbing again, gold faces a more complicated setup.
Supportive for gold: renewed geopolitical stress, a softer dollar, and any move back into safe-haven positioning.
Less supportive for gold: if higher oil revives inflation fears and pushes markets to expect tighter policy for longer.
What that means in simple terms: gold can still stay firm, but it may not be a straight-line fear trade. It can rally on instability, then struggle if the market decides that inflation and yields are the bigger consequence.
So gold this week is not just a war chart. It is a chart of how the market ranks two fears: geopolitical risk, or sticky inflation. Let’s take a closer look at the charts.
[Left] XAUUSD (Gold) Daily Chart & H1 Chart [Right]
Price is sitting around the H4 order block (key support) while rejecting a daily key level above
Failure to hold → downside opens toward the 4,680 area
Holding above keeps short-term bullish structure intact
Market is compressing → break from this zone sets the next move
In short: this level decides whether gold corrects lower or pushes back toward highs.
📉📈 Nasdaq (NQ) /S&P 500 (ES) Futures
Equities ended last week with a very clear message: investors wanted to believe the crisis was moving out of the way.