The index recovered less than half of Wednesday's drop. Energy split on earnings instead of oil, and technology produced the widest spread on the board, a 6.9% winner and a 12.8% loser on the same day.

Bullion, a gold ETF, and a mining stock can deliver the identical price move and three completely different tax outcomes, depending on the account and the form the metal takes.

The US paused strikes overnight and Iran and Oman are still nowhere near a deal on the strait. Two commodities read the same week two different ways.

WTI's third straight losing session dragged gold down with it Tuesday, ending Monday's brief decoupling. Research on the disposition effect predicts how clients who bought last week's peak will respond, and it is not by selling.

WTI fell more than eight per cent Monday, its sharpest single session drop since the Strait of Hormuz disruption began in February. Gold, which has traded as the same war premium trade for five months, barely moved. The Fed's Wednesday decision was already repriced by the gap between them.

A third oil chokepoint opened overnight in Kazakhstan and WTI fell almost five percent anyway, on reports that Pakistan and China are trying to revive US-Iran talks. The ten year Treasury yield did not move off Thursday's cycle high, and that gap is the story heading into next week's Fed decision.

Wednesday's record TSX close and Thursday's reversal, paired with gold's drop as Brent crossed $100, show why recent and vivid moves distort judgment more than the data itself.

The Geopolitical desk this morning called a successful strike on a laden tanker the tail risk, not the base case. By early afternoon the Houthis had claimed exactly that, and gold's failure to rally on it is the tell that this has become an inflation story rather than a fear story.

The TSX closed at 35,578.04 on a battery metals and energy rally Wednesday, while Wall Street de-risked into two earnings reports that went on to confirm the worry.

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.

The index added 408.76 points to close at 35,369.08 Tuesday, its strongest session in weeks, as gold-linked miners outran even the energy names benefiting from still-elevated oil prices.

This morning's five desks read Tuesday as a mediation signal cooling a stable, monthlong standoff. The afternoon's real move came from a pipeline attack on the Caspian coast that none of them saw coming, and it is what actually broke gold's flat trade.

Anchoring bias explains why investors still expect a safe haven payoff that has not arrived, and the disposition effect is now the more relevant risk in client gold positions.

Brent touched $90 and WTI hit $84.59 Monday on the same headlines, but Toronto and New York read them in opposite directions: U.S. indices rallied on a semiconductor rebound ahead of this week's earnings while the TSX's precious metals weighting dragged it lower.

A single conciliatory sentence from Tehran erased most of a four dollar intraday move in WTI crude on the same weekend the conflict's confirmed U.S. death toll rose to 17, while gold barely moved at all.

Gold's failure to rally on the biggest escalation of the US-Iran war in weeks is not a fluke. It is the clearest sign yet that oil-driven inflation fear, not geopolitical fear, is now setting the price of the safe-haven trade, and Canadian portfolios showed the same pattern in miniature on Friday.