eli terminal — Good Friday

Jobs dropped into a closed market. OPEC meets Saturday. The Iran deadline expires Sunday night. Monday absorbs all three at once.

S&P 500 656 closed · WTI $112 +11.4% · GOLD $4,679 −1.9% · VIX 24.5 · CEASEFIRE 20% ↓19pp · OIL $120 70% · NFP +178K vs +57K exp

Thursday swung 600 points trough-to-peak on one headline. Markets gapped down hard (SPY to 645, QQQ to 572) then clawed back every point after Iran and Oman announced a Hormuz transit protocol that traders read as a ceasefire signal. It was not. Ceasefire odds collapsed from 39% to 20% once the details landed: a toll booth, not a peace deal. Oil ripped 11% to $112. Gold sold off 2%, the rotation that prices war getting worse, not better. And the man arranging the Vance back-channel, former Iranian FM Kamal Kharazi, had his house bombed, his wife killed. The market recovered on a headline about diplomacy while diplomacy itself was being buried in rubble.

The Tape — 5 Days Into Good Friday

Thursday's 600-point swing and oil breakout above $112 dominate the week. Volume conviction is in energy, not equities.

The Delayed Bomb

Oil broke through the $101 ceiling that had held for two weeks. WTI went from $84 on March 23 to $114 intraday on April 2, a $30 range in eight trading days. But energy equities are not buying it: XLE is up 5.5% over 30 days while crude is up 38%, a 32-point divergence. Either XLE catches up violently, or the oil rally is a geopolitical premium that gets repriced the moment a ceasefire headline sticks.

The war’s most durable damage is already in the fertilizer market. Urea at $700 per ton, up 50% from pre-war levels, is baked into spring planting decisions. USDA confirmed corn acres fell 3% to 95.3 million. Expensive fertilizer in March means lower yields in September means higher grocery bills by winter. Food CPI runs +2.4% today. Helios AI projects 12–18% by Q4 if urea stays above $600.

Oil & Gold — 1 Month

Oil breakout is parabolic. Gold sold off on the war escalation, the kind of rotation that prices physical risk, not financial risk.

The Weekend Collision

Three catalysts resolve over one weekend with no liquid equity market to absorb any of them. NFP already landed: +178K against a +57K consensus. February revised down to −133K. The two-month average is +23K, one month of collapse, one month of recovery, both bottled up. OPEC meets Saturday to decide May output. The Iran deadline expires Sunday night at 8 PM Eastern.

The Collision Calendar Fri 8:30 AM — NFP: +178K (vs +57K exp; Feb rev to -133K) Sat 10 AM — OPEC+ May output decision Sun 6 PM — CME futures reopen Sun 8 PM — Iran deadline expires Mon 9:30 — Cash equities reopen, absorb all three

The scenarios: Extension (40%): Trump extends the deadline again, third time in a row, oil pulls back to $105–108, SPY opens flat. Escalation (30%): strikes on power plants resume, oil runs to $120+, SPY gaps down 2–3%. Ceasefire (10%): the surprise, oil crashes to $85, SPY gaps up 3–5%. Twenty percent for something in between.

Lloyd’s war risk insurance has gone from $150,000 to $5 million per voyage, a 33x increase that has not budged one tick since the Iran-Oman protocol headlines. When Lloyd’s starts cutting rates, that’s your all-clear on oil. Until then, every headline about diplomatic progress is noise.

Monday absorbs NFP, OPEC, and the Iran deadline in a single opening print. The last time a Good Friday jobs report collided with a geopolitical deadline over the same weekend, the following Monday gapped 3.2%. The market cannot hedge what it cannot trade. Everything is bottled up, and Monday is the release valve.

The Collision Weekend

The Delayed Bomb

The Weekend Collision