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.

Record first half results and gold ounces sold up 23 percent were not enough to offset a miss on a single consensus figure, the same pattern that hit Barrick two sessions earlier.

Friday's gold and oil decoupling was real. Assuming it holds without the Hormuz deal actually closing is the availability heuristic at work.

Investors are pricing the latest Strait of Hormuz breakthrough as a first event. The 2026 record shows announced de-escalations in this conflict have a short and measurable half-life, and the research on base-rate neglect explains exactly why that record is not being used.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Iran's widening conflict dominated headlines Thursday, but the data that will actually move the Bank of Canada on July 15 landed quietly this morning. Why the vivid story crowds out the relevant one, and what the labour market has actually been saying for twelve months.

Gold fell 16 percent from its April peak as the market priced a durable calm in the Strait of Hormuz. Monday night's tanker attack is a live test of recency bias, and it will play out in client phone calls before it plays out in prices.

Investors are treating a Fed rate scare and a geopolitical de-escalation as the same emotional signal, and selling gold into both.

Gold has fallen more than 10 percent from its June peak and WTI has slid to levels last seen before the conflict began. The anchoring bias explains why many investors still cannot see it.

Gold has fallen 25% from January's record high, and the research on anchoring and loss aversion explains why that decline feels worse than the metal's underlying case.

When geopolitical relief arrives, investors don't exhale. They reach for yield. Research on the overreaction cycle explains why the most dangerous moment is right now.

WTI has dropped more than $20 from its April peak. Clients sitting on large energy gains are feeling something Kahneman identified in 1979. The advisor who understands the disposition effect will hold them in place. The one who does not will watch them lock in a tax bill and miss the next leg.

Missiles over Tel Aviv on Sunday night. The TSX up 0.19% on Monday. The gap between what your clients felt and what markets did is not an anomaly. It is the availability heuristic doing exactly what Tversky and Kahneman predicted it would.