Every major index closed higher Wednesday on Hormuz de-escalation hopes, but gold's largest single-session gain of the week and oil's near-flat close tell a more cautious story than the record headlines do.

Tuesday's TSX rally and 6.36% WTI decline priced Hormuz optimism as though the strait were reopening. What Iranian, American, and Omani officials are actually describing is a temporary, Iran-administered corridor with a stated one-to-three-month shelf life, and the two sides do not agree on its terms.

The TSX gained more in one Tuesday session than it lost all of Friday, and gold did the heavy lifting again. But the Government of Canada bond curve eased instead of rising, and the loonie could not hold Friday's level, which is the more useful signal for what happens at the Bank of Canada's September 2 decision.

Trump called off what he described as the biggest strike on Iran since World War Two, then reissued an ultimatum within a day. The chain from that whiplash to Canadian portfolios runs through gasoline prices and the Bank of Canada's September 2 decision as much as through crude oil charts.

Crude has reversed sharply four times in the past month, each time on a headline that got priced as resolution and then was not. The pattern has a name, and it explains why Tuesday's rebound should not be read as an answer either.

A week spent showing Hormuz traffic recovering and the Bank of Canada holding steady ended with tanker strikes, a 19-year Treasury yield high, and a TSX decline that tracked neither.

On July 8, twenty-one days after the memorandum that defined June, the United States and Iran resumed open conflict. WTI round-tripped from a five-month low back above eighty-five dollars, Warsh's Fed sent long yields to a nineteen-year high, and the Strait of Hormuz closed the month at its worst traffic reading of the war.

Fourteen vessels crossed the strait Wednesday without a political settlement behind them. The gap between operational improvement and an actual deal is where the risk to Canadian energy portfolios is sitting right now.

Wednesday's diplomatic track, the one this desk flagged as the base case two sessions ago, did not survive the week. WTI's climb back above $85 is the market's first read on whether this round of escalation resolves like the last one or does not.

Every missile Iran fired at US forces overnight was shot down, a familiar outcome after five months of war. What changed was Saudi Arabia joining US strikes in Iraq, a shift from broker to combatant with a direct mechanism into Canadian energy portfolios.

Houthi forces claimed a strike on Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, the route built to move crude around the Strait of Hormuz entirely, the same day Oman proposed a formal Hormuz shipping mechanism. The base case still points to de-escalation, but the tail risk just moved to different infrastructure.

Houthi missiles struck two Aramco refining complexes Saturday, widening a war that had mostly stayed confined to Iran and its immediate coastline. Markets are pricing a different signal instead: a quiet pause between the United States and Iran that touches a far larger share of global oil supply.

Houthi missiles struck two Saudi Aramco refineries Saturday, the first direct hit on the kingdom's oil infrastructure in four years. The bigger price move came from something with no pictures at all: a quiet, unannounced pause in US strikes on Iran.

Two Saudi tankers struck in the Red Sea push Brent past $100 for the first time since May. The muted reaction across the TSX and gold suggests markets still treat this as tail risk, not the base case.

Bab el-Mandeb traffic carrying Saudi crude surged more than tenfold this year as producers routed around Strait of Hormuz risk. A new Houthi blockade threat is closing that alternative just as Iran escalates attacks on the original chokepoint.

Trump dismissed near term Iran negotiations Wednesday and warned of strikes on Iran's nuclear facility, sending oil to a six week high. The TSX rose again anyway, the same result Tuesday's ceasefire hope produced, but the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq barely moved.