With a tenuous memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran, crude oil prices continued to sell off this past week, although the declines were not as steep as what we saw in the week prior.
There were a number of dizzying geopolitical headlines coming out of Washington and the Persian Gulf this past week that played havoc with the various markets.
Going into this week, focus will remain on US equity markets as investors wait to see whether Friday's selloff will intensify, in which case we could see knock-on price declines in a number of other complexes—including base and precious metals.
Crude oil prices retraced late last week on growing optimism about the Iran war. All this sounds promising. But our sense is this is going to be an intricate sequencing game. And it runs the risk of unraveling if one side or the other seeks to prioritize its concessions over those made to the other. We will have to see what happens.
There was a lot going on this past week on both the geopolitical and economic fronts. Investors were fixated on the two-day visit to China by President Trump. He arrived in Beijing last Wednesday night, with a massive corporate delegation in tow. Expectations were high that some progress would be made on a host of thorny issues. But at the end of the day, the trip produced relatively modest results.
In the base metals markets, we had a mixed showing. Tin did best, adding almost 10% on the week on concern about lagging supply.
The Iran war enters its third month this week with few promising off-ramps materializing for a possible end to the conflict.
Markets were all over the map last week. But once again, it was energy that commanded the most attention.
We expect markets to open on the back foot as we head into the new week. And we would not be surprised to see a good portion of Friday's losses in oil recouped once trading in Asia gets underway.
Things took an ominous turn after President Trump announced he would order the US Navy to block any vessels entering or exiting the Gulf. We suspect we will see another sizable bounce in crude and a resumed slide in both precious metals and base metals as the two parties now potentially resort to replacing talks with missiles.