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The dollar was firm on Monday as uncertainty clouded a tentative U.S.-Iran peace deal following threats from President Donald Trump to restart the war in the Middle East and Tehran’s announcement it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. Despite rising tensions, U.S.-Iran peace talks stretched into their second day in Switzerland under the terms of a memorandum of understanding reached last week to extend a ceasefire from April for at least another 60 days. Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone, said it was not surprising how quickly adherence to the terms of the deal had broken down. “Ultimately, what…
Gold price (XAU/USD) trades with mild losses around $4,155 during the early Asian session on Monday. Traders continue to assess the developments surrounding the US-Iran peace talks in Switzerland. However, hawkish signals from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) might cap the upside for the precious metals in the near term. US President Donald Trump over the weekend threatened strikes on Iran if Hezbollah keeps attacking Israel, raising concerns about progress for peace talks between Washington and Tehran. Iranian negotiators suspended high-stakes talks with the US in Switzerland in response to a flurry of verbal threats issued by Trump to strike Iran again, but…
The Indian rupee has been hitting the headlines frequently since the beginning of the year. The domestic currency fell to a new low of 96.96 against the dollar in May this year. It has since recovered and is currently at 94.3,3 down 6 per cent for the year so far.The US-Iran peace deal, which has pulled oil prices sharply lower, and the Reserve Bank of India’s recent measures to attract foreign money inflows have aided the rupee’s recovery from its all-time low.It is not only against the dollar that the rupee has weakened. It has also fallen against other major…
Iran says it is closing the Strait of Hormuz after accusing the United States (US) and Israel of violating the ceasefire. According to Iran, the decision came over the continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon.The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy issued a warning to all vessels: “Do not approach the Strait of Hormuz; otherwise, your security will be jeopardized.”This is a developing story; more to come. Source
India’s balance of payments outlook looks more favourable than the rupee’s recent weakness suggests, with a Q1 CY26 surplus and lower oil and gold import assumptions prompting Goldman Sachs to cut its current account deficit forecasts, the brokerage said in a research report.Goldman Sachs said India posted a $7.2bn BoP surplus in Q1 CY26 despite softer capital inflows, supported by stronger remittances, robust services exports and low oil imports.The apparent divergence between INR weakness and strong underlying BoP fundamentals suggests recent currency pressure was driven more by precautionary dollar demand amid heightened West Asia’s uncertainty than by a deterioration in…
Brent is back near $80 and West Texas Intermediate near $77, which means the Oil market has handed back almost the entire premium it built over nearly four months of open war with Iran. The tape is treating this week’s US-Iran memorandum as a finished peace: Blockade lifted, Strait of Hormuz reopening, Iranian barrels cleared to sell, equities at a record high while the President takes a victory lap on falling pump prices. The problem is that the market ran this exact trade in April, priced the all-clear inside a single session, and got run over within hours when the…
The textbook calls the Canadian Dollar a petro-currency, which means that with a Middle East war keeping Crude Oil bid, the Loonie should be holding its own. Instead it spent this week sliding to a fresh 14-month low against the Greenback, capping a run in which the US Dollar has closed higher in six of the last seven weeks. The textbook is wrong, at least for now: the Loonie has quietly stopped trading like a Crude Oil proxy, with its weakness driven by two forces that have nothing to do with the price of a barrel.A petro-currency in name onlyFor…
The Euro did something this week that ought to be impossible: it fell in the same fortnight the European Central Bank (ECB) delivered its first interest rate hike since 2023. EUR/USD slid to a fresh multi-week low near 1.1400 before clawing back to a tentative floor around 1.1450; the lesson is that not every rate hike is a vote of confidence. The ECB tightened because an energy shock forced its hand, not because the eurozone economy is firing. That distinction is why the single currency cannot turn a hawkish central bank into a rally.A hike that smells like surrenderLook at…
The Australian Dollar spent this week as a passenger in someone else’s trade. A hawkish Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and a surging US Dollar dragged the Aussie down to the 0.7000 handle, with the pair’s sharp mid-week drop owing more to events in Washington than to anything out of Canberra. Yet the Aussie is not quite the pure risk-proxy it tends to get treated as. It carries a domestic inflation problem of its own; next week hands it a rare chance to trade on that rather than on the Greenback’s momentum.The RBA is not done being hawkishThe Reserve Bank…
Gold is supposed to be the asset you want when the world looks dangerous, which makes this week’s price action quietly remarkable. Bullion ended the week down close to 1.5%, its sixth straight week of lower or flat closes, even as a Middle East war ran into its fourth month and an unsigned ceasefire kept geopolitical risk firmly on the table. The metal that is meant to thrive on exactly this backdrop is instead grinding toward the $4,000 handle, well off the February record near $5,600. The explanation has almost nothing to do with fear and almost everything to do…