[MARKET ANALYSIS] Oil futures continued to pull back in the absence of any major fresh escalation in the Iran conflict

WTI/Brent: WTI Sep'26 -1.4% / Brent Oct'26 -1.1%

• Oil futures continued to pull back overnight amid a lack of major fresh escalation in the Iran conflict, although there were reports of explosions in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdistan region, while US President Trump announced that the Board of Peace reached a historic agreement for the disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.

Gold: -0.4%

• Gave back some of its recent spoils and returned to beneath the USD 4,100/oz level as the dollar regained some composure.

Copper: +0.2%

• Takes a breather after steadily advancing yesterday, while markets also reflect on the tech surge and weak China PMIs.

The pattern here is the familiar fade of a geopolitical risk premium once an acute escalation window passes without fresh incident: crude has historically rallied on headline strikes and then bled back over subsequent sessions when supply flows prove uninterrupted, and the tell in those episodes has been whether physical disruption, freight and insurance rates, or tanker routing actually change rather than the noise level itself. Reports of explosions in Iraqi Kurdistan sit in the secondary category, a region with prior form for episodic attacks that have tended to dent output only briefly, so the market distinction is between events touching export infrastructure and those that do not. A disarmament agreement headline of the kind announced would, in comparable episodes, compress the tail-risk bid further rather than reprice outright supply. Gold easing back below a round level as the dollar firms is the standard mirror of that unwind, with the haven bid and the currency move historically pulling in the same direction. Copper holding gains against weak China PMIs fits the longer-running split between macro-demand pessimism and supply-side tightness that has characterised the metal through past cycles. What bears watching is whether the pullback stalls at the pre-escalation base, which is where these fades have typically found support.