Thursday's session belonged to oil and the carry trade. The US-Iran memorandum was signed at Versailles overnight, tankers began moving through the Strait of Hormuz within hours, and WTI fell from $79.93 to a session close near $74.82 - its lowest level since early March. The peace deal's deflationary logic played out exactly as forecast, with oil's decline filtering into a broader equity recovery led by semiconductors and AI infrastructure names. The S&P added 0.9% and Nasdaq climbed 1.3%, giving silver the equity floor it needed to recover to $69.77 off Wednesday's hawkish Fed-driven slide.
The session's most important unresolved situation is USD/JPY. The pair briefly touched 160.70, the Ministry of Finance trigger level flagged in this morning's briefing, and the MoF did not intervene. That absence of response is itself a signal worth watching: when a 0th-percentile CFTC short position absorbs every catalyst without covering, the eventual unwind tends to be sharp. With US markets closed Friday for Juneteenth, the overnight session carries asymmetric risk in both directions for that pair, and thin liquidity means any intervention announcement would move price hard and fast.
Gold closed below $4,330 after touching $4,382 intraday - a rejection that keeps the bearish structure intact. The $4,270-$4,280 support zone is now the critical reference for Monday's open.
The full briefing carries the complete level-by-level breakdown for all eight instruments, the detailed BoE vote analysis and what it means for GBP/JPY going into the long weekend, and the specific positioning guidance for navigating the Juneteenth gap risk. Subscribe to Markets Mastered to access every session in full.