Strathcona Resources led an 8.74 percent gain on rising Hormuz-driven crude, while Monday's worst performers fell on unrelated company-specific news.

A tanker attack, a Saudi refinery strike and dueling preconditions have Brent near a five-week high, right as the Bank of Canada heads into its September decision.

WTI and Brent jumped roughly 4 percent as Washington and Tehran each pointed to the naval blockade as the actual obstacle, a sharper claim than either side has made in weeks. Gold barely moved and the Canadian dollar stayed flat, leaving the loonie without the lift its own yield advantage and oil's rally would normally provide.

Last week's oil selloff assumed a Hormuz deal was close. Iran's weekend preconditions confirm it is not, and the chain runs straight back to the Bank of Canada's inflation math.

Friday's gold and oil decoupling was real. Assuming it holds without the Hormuz deal actually closing is the availability heuristic at work.

A blowout Canadian jobs report and a shock US payrolls miss sent the TSX and S&P 500 to record highs this week, pushed gold to a two-month high, and knocked Brent crude down more than 7%, even as the Strait of Hormuz shipping deal stayed stalled in Iran's parliament.

The reported Iran-Oman shipping agreement faces three separate approval points before it changes anything for Canadian energy portfolios, and this week's gold rally was driven by something else entirely.

WTI's whipsaw between Hormuz deal headlines and tanker incident headlines is the availability heuristic playing out in real time, and it is not settling anything for clients trying to read the trend.

Financials have gained 22% since the war began in February while materials fell 25%. The rotation behind that split, not Wednesday's single session, is what built the TSX's record, and Thursday's oil whipsaw shows the war that caused it hasn't actually ended.

Markets have priced steady de-escalation. A nearly identical arrangement collapsed three weeks ago, and Wednesday brought both a Houthi tanker attack and an Iranian statement that the strait stays closed until the US ends its blockade.

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.

The composite gained 1.63% Tuesday on Hormuz optimism, but the sector-level data shows two different markets trading inside the same session: materials up 4.7% on a safe-haven gold rally, energy down as WTI fell 6.36% on the identical headline.

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.

Investors are pricing the latest Strait of Hormuz breakthrough as a first event. The 2026 record shows announced de-escalations in this conflict have a short and measurable half-life, and the research on base-rate neglect explains exactly why that record is not being used.

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.