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.

Daily crossings through the Strait of Hormuz fell from 19 to 3 over the past week as President Trump threatened to bomb Oman, the neutral party brokering a shipping deal, introducing a new failure mode for the crisis.

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.

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.

The interim ceasefire and the sanctioned toll authority's 60-day waiver both lapse today, and neither expiry resolves how oil is actually still moving through the strait.

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.

Trump and Iran's foreign minister traded accusations over control of the strait, but the price move came from the IEA and OPEC's demand forecasts, not the conflict itself.

Brent snapped a six session rally Thursday, not because anything resolved in the Strait of Hormuz, but because a genuine forecasting split between the world's two largest energy bodies finally showed up in price.

A CENTCOM missile strike, a deadly Houthi attack in the Red Sea, and a Trump demand for war reparations are running on one track this week. Advanced talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are running on another. Oil is pricing both at once.

Deal-hope optimism sent the TSX to a financials-led record while Canada's 10-year yield spiked to a 26-month high on the same day, pricing the same story two different ways.