Gold miners, not trade negotiators, drove Friday's gains, and the currency signal underneath it tells advisors which crisis is actually live heading into the weekend.

Canadian bank shares and gold miners moved in opposite directions this week, and the reasoning has more to do with which headline landed most recently than with either sector's fundamentals.

The U.S. Treasury's debt buyback briefly eased global yields and lifted gold on Wednesday, but Canada's own 10 year yield climbed to a fresh high Thursday regardless, and gold's pullback on a fresh Iran escalation shows the week's rally was a rates trade, not a war trade.

Agnico Eagle, Wheaton Precious Metals and Barrick surged as much as 10.5 percent while Canada's five largest banks fell in tandem, and the psychology behind that instinct to chase it deserves more scrutiny than the headline number.

A Treasury buyback and a tariff truce produced a clean risk-on session across equities, oil and the loonie. Gold rose more than all of them, and that gap is the story.

A genuine Strait of Hormuz escalation and a fresh 19 year high in long yields hit the tape on the same afternoon. Only one of them moved gold.

Energy and gold names had a strong Monday. Technology and rate-sensitive names didn't. The 30-year Treasury yield hitting its highest close since 2007 is what decides which story wins Tuesday.

A vessel struck overnight, Iran's language just got sharper, and Trump has widened the threat to a third country. Oil is up, but nowhere near March's peak. That gap is the story.

Statistics Canada's July inflation surprise and the Geopolitical desk's Hormuz toll deadline were written up this morning as two unrelated stories. They are the same mechanism, a few hours apart.

Toronto retreated from a record close on tech weakness and soft US data. The overnight tape shows a risk-off tilt across commodities and volatility as the Hormuz ceasefire formally expires today.

A blowout jobs report pushed Canadian equities to a fresh high. A widening Iran conflict pushed oil and gold to their own. Friday's US retail sales miss cracked one of those stories without touching the other.

Friday's sector rotation mirrored Thursday's record close in reverse, and oil's refusal to react to stalled Hormuz talks confirms the story has moved from supply to demand.

A well telegraphed inflation print produced exactly the pattern behavioural finance predicts, and the biggest single mover of the day was a decline.

Wednesday's fourth consecutive record close paired financials with gold miners. Thursday broke the pairing apart, and a cooler U.S. inflation print did not do for Canadian yields what it did for the Fed.

Wednesday's record TSX session came with a 12 percent single stock surge and a near 5 percent single stock decline on the same day. The sector rotation underneath the headline number is the more durable signal.

A cooling US CPI print eased yields across North America Wednesday, but the TSX's fourth straight record now runs on gold, not oil, and Canada's own economic data still sits underneath the Fed's good news.