Dow at a record. Oil down 8% on the week. Same five sessions.

Thursday’s Dow record, the post-earnings reads on NVIDIA and Walmart, and oil’s retreat on US-Iran deal hopes combine into the four readings that set today’s open. The detailed account follows in the section below.

Thursday closed the loop on a week that ran in opposite directions for equities and energy. The Dow rose 0.55% to 50,285.66 — its first record close since February — pulled higher by US-Iran deal hopes after reports of a “near” draft resolution circulated through the New York session. The S&P 500 finished +0.17% at 7,445.72; the Nasdaq +0.09% at 26,293.10; the Russell 2000 actually led the day at +1.03%, the first up day for small caps in five sessions as duration relief from the easier long-end yields finally reached the most rate-sensitive corner of the equity market. Under the surface, the session was uneven: NVIDIA gave back 1.8% as the Q2 guide failed to clear the upper analyst range typical of past quarters, and Walmart fell 2% on a weak full-year outlook ($2.75 to $2.85 EPS against $2.91 consensus).

The headline driver was oil. WTI fell 1.92% to $96.35; Brent 2.10% to $102.58 — both crude benchmarks now down roughly 8% from Tuesday’s intraday peaks. The mechanical explanation is the diplomatic channel — investors are pricing a meaningful probability of a US-Iran framework that resumes meaningful Hormuz flow, even though the Strait itself remains operationally closed and Trump rejected Iran’s written counterproposal in the same session (“totally unacceptable”). The 30-year Treasury reopening priced cleanly: the long end finished off the week’s peak at 5.098% (from Tuesday’s 5.19% intraday high); 10-year at 4.55%. Williams and Daly spoke late in the session — first regional Fed remarks under Warsh’s leadership; both stuck to carefully scripted continuity language with Powell’s policy framing intact.

Today’s calendar is light. EU flash PMIs at 09:00 GMT and US S&P Global flash PMIs at 09:45 ET — the only major data on the docket. Deere reports Q2 earnings pre-market — consensus EPS roughly $5.85 / revenue $13.7B; an important read on industrial / agricultural capex. Treasuries close early at 14:00 ET ahead of Memorial Day weekend; equity markets keep normal hours. The session into the long weekend will be dominated by positioning unwinds — Iran-deal headline risk over the three-day break is the asymmetric exposure, and Hormuz weekend tail risk has been the trade for two months running.

Every major equity index green, including the Russell 2000 in its first up day in five; yields eased modestly; the dollar softened. Oil was the lone material outlier — WTI through $97 and Brent through $103 on US-Iran deal hopes. BTC also gave back as risk capital rotated into equities rather than digital assets.

Thursday’s session in the Gulf followed the global script — equities firmer on the deal-hopes lift, oil-linked names lagging on the −2% crude move. Aramco gave back another 1.3% to track Brent through $103; ADNOC −0.9%; regional E&P names broadly −0.8 to −1.4%. The bid was in financials and developers: FAB +1.5%, ENBD +1.3%, Emaar +1.7%, ADIB +1.1% — all benefiting from the US-yield retracement and the same duration-risk-premium tightening that flowed through GCC credit. UAE 10-year eurobond spreads narrowed another 4 bps; Saudi 5-year CDS down 5 bps; Qatar 5-year tighter 3 bps. DFM closed +1.1%; ADX +0.9%; Tadawul +0.6%.

For positioning into Memorial Day weekend, the Vault house view at the open: maintain the GCC overweight on the rate-relief tailwind; rotate slightly further into financials and developers from energy names (the asymmetry is now wider — every basis point of US-Iran progress hurts oil-linked equity); preserve the Brent topside hedge purely as a long-weekend insurance policy against headline reversal. The Hormuz indicator stays CLOSED — diplomatic progress has not yet translated into commercial flow — but the trajectory has reversed from “tightening” to “easing” for the first time since the mid-April war began. A weekend Iran-deal announcement is the asymmetric catalyst; a weekend escalation reverses everything.

The week ended where the prior week began — with the macro narrative driven entirely by Iran. The difference: this time the headlines pulled risk higher and oil lower, rather than the other way around.