A weekend tanker strike and a damaged Saudi pipeline pushed WTI toward $103, but stocks, gold and the Canadian dollar all moved the other way, pointing to Wednesday''s Fed decision as the real driver.

The S&P/TSX Composite closed at 35,697.49 on September 11, down 3.7 percent from its August high, even as WTI settled above $100 a barrel for the second time in a week.

WTI crude closed at $102.55 on September 13, the day an Iranian vessel was struck near Qeshm, and the chain from the Strait of Hormuz to Canadian portfolios runs through gasoline prices, energy equities, and the currency.

The Bank of Canada held for a seventh straight decision while Fed hike odds climbed past seventy per cent, both reacting to the same barrel of oil that also pulled the TSX to a six-week low even as Canadian energy names rallied around it.

The oil-driven CPI shock and the TSX afternoon rebound on Friday are not two separate stories. They are the same number, working in opposite directions inside one trading session, while the Bank of Canada arrives at the identical conclusion through its own tariff-driven channel.

The S&P/TSX Composite closed at 35,616.77 on Thursday, down 0.81 per cent, as a U.S. procurement threat hit Canadian engineering and infrastructure names hard enough that a surging oil price could not offset the damage.

WTI crude closed at $102.48 on September 10, up 25 per cent since mid-August, as U.S. strikes on Iranian tankers and Iranian retaliation against ships using unauthorized routes have cut Hormuz traffic by more than a third.

Canada's 10-year yield hit a fresh two-year high Thursday, but Reuters and Investing.com are now attributing the move to a global bond selloff tied to a soft U.S. Treasury buyback plan, not the tariff dispute that explained the prior two sessions. Only part of that move unwinds if Friday's CPI comes in soft.

The composite closed at 35,906.56 Wednesday, down 0.6% and in its fourth decline in five sessions, even as WTI crude climbed toward $100 on the tanker war.

WTI has surged since the U.S. and Iran began trading strikes on tankers in the Persian Gulf. The currency that usually tracks Canadian energy windfalls closely has barely moved, and that gap is the real portfolio question.

The Bank held at 2.25% on September 2 and named gasoline-driven inflation as the reason to stay cautious. WTI has moved 7% higher since, ahead of the CPI print that lands before the October decision.

WTI is up 18% in thirteen sessions as the tanker war escalates, and the same headlines pulling clients toward energy are the pattern Barber and Odean’s research says loses money.

A war escalation and a trade fight pulled Canadian portfolios in opposite directions today. The Government of Canada 10-year yield did not move enough to say which one the bond market believes.

WTI crude closed at $92.72 Tuesday after Iran-aligned Houthi forces struck three Saudi Aramco facilities, and the mechanism that changed is more consequential for Canadian portfolios than the price level itself.

Tuesday's retaliatory tariffs, not the widening Iran conflict, finally moved the yield that Fed dovishness and a historic jobs miss could not.

WTI is on its sixth straight higher session heading into the Tuesday open, U.S. futures are lower on Middle East and rate uncertainty, and the split puts Canadian energy names on the right side of both stories at once.