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Brent crude settled Friday at $72.48 per barrel — its highest since July 2025 — and gold held near $5,200 an ounce as Operation Epic Fury caught markets positioned for a weekend of diplomacy, not war. With Iran retaliating against Gulf bases and the Strait of Hormuz carrying twenty per cent of global oil supply, traders now face the widest risk gap between Friday’s close and Monday’s open since the June 2025 strikes.
Crude: From War Premium to War
Brent settled $1.73 higher at $72.48 on the ICE front-month contract, a 2.45 per cent gain, after touching an intraday high of $73.00. West Texas Intermediate rose $1.81, or 2.78 per cent, to $67.02 — both benchmarks at multi-month peaks. A Reuters poll of thirty-four analysts published Friday estimated that somewhere between four and ten dollars per barrel of geopolitical risk premium was already embedded in crude before a single missile struck Tehran. DBS analyst Suvro Sarkar pegged the figure at eight to ten dollars and warned the Strait of Hormuz remained the pivotal variable.
Those estimates were built on the assumption of a near-miss — talks stalling, posturing continuing. Saturday’s joint US-Israeli operation obliterated that base case. Brent had already been testing six-month highs on Hormuz risk, but missile volleys aimed at Bahrain’s Fifth Fleet headquarters and Kuwait’s military installations have transformed a theoretical shipping threat into an operational one. Kpler senior crude analyst Muyu Xu estimated that even a single day of Hormuz disruption could catapult oil to between $120 and $150 a barrel. Barclays projected Brent reaching $80 in a scenario of material supply interruption, while Lombard Odier warned that a prolonged closure of the strait could temporarily push prices past $100.
OPEC’s fourth-largest producer pumps roughly 3.3 million barrels per day, but the real exposure runs deeper. Approximately twenty million barrels of daily seaborne crude transit the strait, meaning any escalation threatens output far beyond Iran’s own fields. Saudi Arabia and the UAE moved pre-emptively, with Abu Dhabi set to export additional Murban crude in April and Riyadh reportedly preparing a price increase of about one dollar per barrel for Asian customers. The eight-member OPEC+ group meets Sunday to discuss April output and may authorise a larger-than-planned increase to offset potential shortfalls. Before Saturday, the Reuters consensus forecast had Brent averaging $63.85 for the full year — a figure now almost certainly set for an upward revision.
Gold: Seven Months of Gains Meet a War Catalyst
Spot gold closed Friday in the $5,190 to $5,205 range, marking a seventh consecutive monthly gain and a year-to-date advance of roughly twenty-two per cent. April futures settled near $5,226, with OANDA identifying resistance at $5,208, then $5,251 and $5,291, and support at $5,150. The metal had already rallied from a January peak of $5,608 through a brief correction before finding a floor above $5,000 on persistent safe-haven demand and expectations of eventual Federal Reserve easing.
Saturday’s strikes add a fresh accelerant. Gold’s break above $5,000 earlier this year was driven by European tensions and safe-haven flows, and an active Gulf war is a more potent catalyst than either Greenland diplomacy or tariff noise. India’s COMEX gold resistance sits at $5,300 per ounce, and analysts at News24 estimate that a clean break above that level could push Indian domestic prices toward 168,000 to 170,000 rupees per ten grams. J.P. Morgan maintains a year-end target of $6,300, Goldman Sachs recently lifted its forecast to $5,400, and Bank of America holds a twelve-month target of $6,000. Silver closed above $93 per ounce on COMEX Friday, with a break above $95 potentially sending the white metal back toward triple digits.
Equities and FX: A Friday Rout Gets Worse
Markets were already reeling before a single bomb fell. Friday’s US session delivered a brutal finish to February after the January producer price index came in far hotter than expected — core PPI surged 0.8 per cent against a consensus of 0.3 per cent. The Dow shed 521 points, or 1.05 per cent, to close at 48,977.92. The S&P 500 ended at 6,878.88, down 0.43 per cent, while the Nasdaq lost 0.92 per cent to settle at 22,668.21, capping its worst month since March 2025. The CBOE Volatility Index climbed back above twenty, closing at 21.12. The ten-year Treasury yield slipped to 3.96 per cent — below four per cent for the first time in four months — as rate-cut expectations collided with sticky inflation data.
On the currency side, the Dollar Index eased to 97.535. The Swiss franc, up three per cent against the dollar year to date, is expected to face further buying pressure when trading resumes, creating what Reuters called a headache for the Swiss National Bank. Bitcoin, no longer treated as a haven asset, fell nearly four per cent on Saturday to as low as $63,038 before stabilising around $64,000, and has shed more than a quarter of its value in two months.
What Monday Opens Will Tell Us
Sunday brings two critical inputs: Middle Eastern bourses — including Saudi Arabia and Qatar — open for the first live reaction, and OPEC+ decides on April output. If the group signals a larger supply increase, crude may find a partial ceiling. If Tehran moves to restrict strait traffic, all bets are off. Vandana Hari of Vanda Insights expects an immediate jump toward $80 should hostilities persist into Monday’s London open. Amro Zakaria, global strategist at Kyoto Network, framed the worst case succinctly: a protracted war puts twenty per cent of global supply at risk, and only then does oil approach $100. Whether that scenario unfolds or the strikes prove limited will determine whether February’s war premium was a down payment — or the full invoice.
