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.

Eleven straight nights of strikes on Iran have not stopped the TSX from climbing toward its 52-week high, and the reason why should concern anyone extrapolating the trend forward.

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.

Three new Section 338 proclamations put a 50 percent tariff on Canadian dairy, alcohol, and select vehicle categories starting August 19, but the sectors the U.S. chose not to touch say more about where this goes next.

The TSX's sharpest rebound in weeks came one session after its worst close in eight, and the clients who reacted to Monday's headlines are the ones who missed it.

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.

Energy led Monday's TSX sector split as crude touched a five week high, but Tuesday's mediation driven pullback in oil is the first real test of whether that leadership holds.

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.

June's CPI print gave the Bank of Canada exactly the improvement it said it was waiting for when it held on July 15. Five days later, the sector most exposed to that decision sold off harder than any other on the index, and traders are still pricing a hike by year end, not a cut.

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.

The alleged U.S. strike on Iran's under-construction Darkhovin nuclear facility is a different category of target than anything hit in the previous five months of this conflict, and the IAEA's finding, not Monday's oil price, is the variable that tells Canadian portfolios which of two paths this war takes next.

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.

Oil climbed to a one-month high and gold fell to an eight-month low on the same day Iran struck civilian infrastructure in Kuwait and Trump dated the next round of strikes to next week. That combination, read against this morning's five desks, says more about how this war is being priced than either asset does alone.

The S&P/TSX Composite closed Thursday at 35,340.15, down 0.21 per cent and essentially unchanged from Friday's close five sessions earlier. In between, the index touched a record high, then gave nearly all of it back in a single session, as elevated oil prices and falling gold prices pulled the benchmark in opposite directions all week.