WTI opens near 84.95 after the weekend brought the first direct military exchange in over a month. US Central Command struck Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island that were preparing to send mines into the Strait of Hormuz, days after the same command declared the shipping lanes cleared and open. Iran then fired on American forces in Jordan, with missiles intercepted and no significant damage reported. Brent moved toward $90 for November.

What is striking is how little the market did with it. Bloomberg reported elevated order flow at the open with almost no follow through, and analysts quoted in the same article saw little appetite to push crude materially higher at this stage. Physical supply explains why. Gulf flows have recovered to roughly 40% of prewar levels, traders monitoring cargoes put 6 to 8 million barrels a day through Hormuz, and vessels are moving along a Tehran approved route on a limited basis. That sets up the week's actual question: whether a supply picture that keeps improving can absorb a conflict that keeps restarting. Trump meets refining executives on Tuesday to discuss fuel prices, which is the nearest thing to a scheduled catalyst crude has.

Price Levels 

• Support: 81.60 → 80.00 → 78.20 
• Resistance: 87.34 → 88.66 → 95.00

Technical View: August closed with Brent swinging through a range of almost $17, which tells you more about conviction than any single level does. WTI needs 87.34 to argue the risk premium is rebuilding, while 81.60 is where the supply recovery starts winning the argument.

Outlook: Elevated but contained. Escalation risk is real and the market has repeatedly declined to pay much for it.

The Dollar Index trades near 99.53 having reclaimed the ground it lost to the Treasury buyback announcement a fortnight ago. Warsh gave it back in a single speech, and the mechanism matters: the rally came from the front end, where two year yields moved most, rather than the long end that has been driving Dollar weakness all quarter.

He also went out of his way to sound optimistic on activity, describing consumer spending as healthy, the labour market as stable and business investment as rising rapidly, and saying the economy appears to have strengthened. That combination, a firm inflation stance alongside confidence in growth, is what took a hike from a tail risk to the base case in an afternoon. The vulnerability is that none of it was formal guidance. Warsh has been deliberate about not providing any, so the repricing rests on interpretation rather than commitment, which is a thinner foundation than the size of the move suggests. Friday's payrolls are the first hard test.

Price Levels 

• Support: 99.36 → 99.20 → 98.50 
• Resistance: 100.00 → 100.25 → 100.50

Technical View: The index is consolidating just under the round 100.00 handle after Friday's 0.44% advance, with 100.25 and 100.50 marking the recovery zone above. Losing 99.20 would suggest the repricing has already run its course. Outlook: Bullish bias into Friday. The hawkish read holds only if the labour data cooperates.

Gold trades near 4465, roughly 5% below the August peak at 4697 but still on course for a 10% monthly gain, its strongest since January. Friday's retreat was a direct response to Warsh, since higher policy rates raise the cost of holding an asset that generates no income.

The interesting development is in how the position is being expressed rather than where the price sits. Aakash Doshi at State Street describes the debasement trade as having been on pause rather than dead, and back in vogue heading into September. Investors are buying call spreads on the main gold ETF instead of outright calls, alongside exotic structures. Implied volatility has risen but nowhere near the levels of the first quarter, and the skew is narrower, which BofA's Neeraj Chaudhary reads as a view that the next move higher will be more capped, with some traders framing a 4900 to 5300 band. That is a market that expects to be right eventually and is unwilling to pay much for the privilege.

Price Levels 

• Support: 4450 → 4315 → 4200 
• Resistance: 4580 → 4700 → 4775

Technical View: The pullback has brought price back toward the 4450 shelf with the cluster of daily exponential averages between 4315 and 4364 forming the deeper floor. Only a sustained break beneath that zone would put the wider advance in question.

Outlook: Corrective within an uptrend. The August move was orderly, which is usually what allows a market to hold its gains.

USD/CAD trades near 1.3897 with the Canadian Dollar under sustained pressure from a trade dispute that has moved from threat to practice. Ottawa's retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% are now in force, and the underlying damage is becoming quantifiable. A Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey found 40% of exporters sell products on the targeted list, nearly 80% of those expect revenue losses, and more than a third put the hit at 50% or worse.

That collides with a growth picture that looks strong in the rear view. The economy expanded at an annualised 3.3% in the second quarter, its fastest in more than three years, led by business investment rebounding after five consecutive quarters of decline. So the Bank of Canada meets Wednesday holding backward data that argues for patience and a forward risk that does not, with domestic forecasters projecting unemployment could reach 7% by year end from 6.4% if the tariffs hold both ways. Macklem's press conference is where that tension gets resolved, and Friday's employment report, forecast at 15.8K after 75.1K, lands in the same hour as US payrolls.

Price Levels 

• Support: 1.3850 → 1.3770 → 1.3730 
• Resistance: 1.3910 → 1.3960 → 1.4000

Technical View: Price is grinding toward 1.3910 with the round 1.4000 the level that would mark a genuine breakout rather than a drift. The 1.3850 shelf has held through the past week and is the first thing to give if talks resume.

Outlook: Higher risk while the dispute runs. The pair is being carried by a story with no scheduled resolution.

EUR/USD trades near 1.1590 after shedding almost half a percent on Friday, dropping through a level it had held comfortably before Warsh spoke. The move was made in Washington rather than Frankfurt, which is worth saying plainly because the European picture has been improving.

Martin Kocher of the Austrian National Bank, speaking at the same symposium, said the European economy is showing more momentum and has been more resilient than expected, and that the threats lean toward price stability. The data this week gives that view something to work with. German preliminary inflation on Monday is forecast at 2.9% annual from 2.8%, with the harmonised measure at 3.0% from 2.8%, and the eurozone flash follows Tuesday with headline harmonised at 3.2% from 2.9% and core steady at 2.5%. Headline accelerating three tenths while core sits still is an energy signature, and it is the pattern that pushed the ECB into moving earlier this year.

Price Levels 

• Support: 1.1581 → 1.1560 → 1.1510 
• Resistance: 1.1623 → 1.1686 → 1.1713

Technical View: The hourly RSI reached about 24 on Friday, deep enough to warn of a corrective bounce without changing the tone, and the pair sits below the 100 and 200 hour averages clustered near 1.1655. Reclaiming 1.1623, the broken channel reference, is the minimum needed to stabilise.

Outlook: Bearish while below 1.1623, though oversold readings argue against chasing it lower here.

NZD/USD trades near 0.5916 into the only central bank meeting this week where a move is actually expected. A Reuters poll conducted between 20 and 27 August found 27 of 31 economists looking for a 25 basis point increase to 2.75% on Wednesday, with two thirds expecting at least one further rise this year, taking the cash rate to 3.0% or above by December.

Context makes the meeting more interesting than the consensus suggests. July's increase was the first in more than three years and came with an explicit signal of more to follow, aimed at pulling inflation back inside the 1% to 3% band. Since then, short Kiwi positioning has been paired sharply against both the Dollar and the Aussie, with the data offering no reason to doubt that guidance. The practical consequence for Wednesday is that the decision itself carries almost no risk and the tone carries all of it, because a hike delivered without conviction about December leaves a crowded position exposed.

Price Levels 

• Support: 0.5905 → 0.5860 → 0.5820 
• Resistance: 0.5987 → 0.6013 → 0.6052

Technical View: The pair holds above its 100 day average near 0.5845 with the 14 day RSI around 63, constructive without being stretched. The upper Bollinger band near 0.5990 has capped every attempt so far and is the barrier that matters.

Outlook: Constructive but crowded. The hike is priced, so the guidance is the trade.

AUD/USD trades near 0.7160, having spent last week outperforming every major currency on the board after inflation came in hotter than anyone expected. July headline rose 1.0% on the month against a 0.9% forecast and a -0.1% June reading, driven by automotive fuel and clothing, while the annual rate eased only to 3.5% against expectations of 3.3%. The trimmed mean held at 3.6% for a second month, comfortably above the RBA's end December forecast of 3.3%.

The repricing was immediate. Cash rate futures now almost fully price a 25 basis point increase to 4.60% by year end, up from 60% before the data landed. Wednesday's Q2 GDP at 0.3% and Thursday's trade balance fill in the growth side, though neither is likely to shift a debate that inflation has already settled. The near term caution comes from momentum rather than fundamentals, with negative divergence building on the indicators even as holding 0.7160 leaves room to test 0.7220.

Price Levels 

• Support: 0.7137 → 0.7129 → 0.7080 
• Resistance: 0.7183 → 0.7200 → 0.7222

Technical View: The pair sits well above its 20 day exponential average at 0.7100 with the RSI at 69.2, close enough to overbought that the four year high at 0.7276 looks like a stretch without a fresh catalyst. The 0.7137 to 0.7129 band is unusually tight and marks the first real test.

Outlook: Bullish but stretched. The rate case is strong and the positioning is no longer early.

The Nasdaq 100 trades near 29,341 with a question mark forming over the quality of the earnings that have justified the year. FT analysis shows the largest technology companies booked more than $160 billion last quarter from the other income line in their accounts, which largely reflects valuation gains on stakes in other AI companies rather than anything they sold or built. That is more than double the roughly $69 billion recorded in the preceding three months.

The scale is what makes it awkward. Alphabet's other income more than doubled to $97.9 billion and Amazon's more than tripled to $53.4 billion in the three months to June, with much of the uplift traced to the SpaceX listing and stakes in Anthropic. Société Générale links the resulting earnings quality concerns to multiples already trimmed from roughly 25 times to 20 times, which is the part that matters now: some of this has been absorbed, and the index has spent a fortnight going nowhere while it happened. ISM lands Tuesday and Thursday and the Beige Book Wednesday, so the rate side gets three chances to add pressure before payrolls.

Price Levels 

• Support: 29,180 → 29,000 → 28,880 
• Resistance: 29,630 → 29,770 → 30,000

Technical View: The index has spent a fortnight range bound between 29,180 and 29,630 without resolving in either direction, which is a market waiting rather than deciding. The round 30,000 is the level that would confirm the August recovery is intact.

Outlook: Cautious. Underlying technology earnings remain strong, but the reported numbers are flattering them.

The Hang Seng trades near 25,525 with three separate activity readings due this week. The official NBS manufacturing gauge lands Monday, forecast at 49.7 from 49.2 and therefore still contracting, alongside the non manufacturing survey, with the RatingDog manufacturing measure Tuesday at a prior of 50.9 and services Thursday at 50.4.

The more consequential development is diplomatic. Scott Bessent has said Washington will hold very robust talks with Beijing, will pursue tariff cuts on $30 billion of non-strategic goods on each side, and will urge G20 finance ministers meeting this week to reassess their trade terms with China, arguing the world cannot accept an ongoing $1.2 trillion Chinese surplus. He also framed tougher barriers as a way of encouraging Beijing to rotate the economy from exports toward domestic demand, with a Trump and Xi summit expected late in September. Underneath the diplomacy, the industrial picture stays difficult, with Longi Green Energy reporting a first half loss of 3.68 billion yuan as the solar downturn extends past two years.

Price Levels 

• Support: 25,400 → 25,050 → 24,800 
• Resistance: 25,825 → 26,080 → 26,220

Technical View: The index has recovered from the 25,050 area without yet reaching the 25,825 barrier that has capped the past month. Holding 25,400 keeps the short term repair intact.

Outlook: Rangebound with a modest upward tilt. Trade talk offers a catalyst the activity data does not.

Bitcoin trades near 77,850 after a second rejection from the 81,000 to 82,000 band in under a fortnight. The rally that got it there was largely mechanical: more than $2.5 billion of bearish positions were liquidated in perpetual futures between 19 and 21 August, turning a macro driven move into a much sharper breakout, and more than $2 billion has since flowed into US listed spot funds.

That leaves an honest question about what this actually is. With shorts flushed out and profit taking under way, the next leg depends on whether fresh spot demand is willing to chase, rather than on forced buying. The macro case has weakened at the margin too, since Warsh's hawkishness works against an asset that has been trading on Dollar liquidity rather than on anything internal to the sector. A daily RSI near 78 says the same thing the price action does.

Price Levels 

• Support: 76,000 → 74,000 → 69,000 
• Resistance: 80,500 → 81,500 → 83,000

Technical View: Price remains above the daily exponential averages, with the 200 day near 72,069 and the 50 and 100 day clustered around 68,400 to 68,700, so the medium term structure is intact. Two failures at 81,500 make it the level that defines the next move.

Outlook: Consolidating. The trend is up and the easy part of this move has already happened.