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.

The TSX Composite closed nearly unchanged Thursday even as banks fell and gold miners rallied sharply, with today's session set to turn on whether the US and Canada finalize a trade deal before tonight's tariff deadline.

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 TSX Composite closed nearly flat after gold miners and Canadian banks moved double digits in opposite directions, while US indices fell broadly on a semiconductor selloff ahead of the FOMC minutes.

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.

Banks and miners fell, energy rose, and a semiconductor selloff that started in the US spread to South Korea overnight.

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.

Monday's decline was 0.17%. The instinct it triggers in clients sitting on a year of record gains is not nearly so small.

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.

Capital gains realized in a record year for the TSX and gold interact with the Alternative Minimum Tax and the OAS recovery tax, neither of which cares that the inclusion rate increase was cancelled.

Investors have learned that Strait of Hormuz headlines are buying opportunities. The mechanism that produced that lesson just changed.

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.

Financials and technology carried the index to 36,759.29 while energy lagged and breadth stayed tight, even as bond yields hit a two year high.