Global financial markets witnessed a wave of sharp volatility on Friday that reshaped the trends of stocks, commodities and precious metals, driven by new US inflation data and emergency logistical obstacles in vital waterways.
While oil markets faced weekly losses despite temporary jumps caused by tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and supply concerns from Venezuela, gold held in a tight range above the $4,000 barrier under strong dollar pressure, coinciding with a collective decline that hit tech stocks on Wall Street and spread violently to Asian bourses, led by Japan and South Korea.
Sharp volatility in oil markets
Oil prices fell on Friday, heading for sharp weekly losses as part of the geopolitical risk premium eased, with benchmark Brent crude futures falling 2.29% to $73.54 per barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude fell 2.41% to $70.18 per barrel.
The decline followed a strong rally of more than 2% in the previous session, following a cargo ship being hit by an unknown shell near the Sultanate of Oman, where Reuters quoted US officials as saying that Tehran fired at the ship as it crossed the strait, prompting the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to suspend the voluntary evacuation program for ships.
Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz rose this week to their highest level since the conflict erupted on Feb. 28 benefiting from de-escalation agreements, but the passage is still partial and represents a limited fraction of the pre-conflict daily average of 125 vessels for the corridor, which carries 20 percent of global consumption.
The developments coincided with preliminary assessments of Venezuela's refining and oil sector confirming that direct damage to major facilities from the two earthquakes that struck the country remains limited, although power cuts have raised doubts about Caracas' ability to sustain its 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) output.
Gold holed above $4,000 barrier
Spot gold prices recorded a limited rebound of 0.24% to $4036.78 an ounce, moving in a narrow range after falling below $4000 earlier in the week for the first time since October 2025, while silver settled near $57.97 an ounce.
The yellow metal is on track for a fourth consecutive weekly loss under pressure from the dollar index, which settled at 101.41 points and maintained its highest since May 2025, driven by data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showing a jump in the PCE index to 4.1% year-on-year in May from 3.8% in April, boosting expectations of tightening U.S. monetary policy and keeping interest rates high for longer.
Major Chinese Banks Curb Retail Trading and Firm Risk Management
In a context related to precious metals trading, Bloomberg revealed strict regulatory moves by major Chinese banks to close retail precious metals trading services to curb volatility and forced liquidations, as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) intends to suspend retail brokerage services on the Shanghai Gold Exchange by July 24 , coinciding with Guangzhou Bank requiring clients to liquidate their positions to avoid risk.
Despite these pressures and global banks such as Goldman Sachs and UBS lowering their year-end gold price forecasts to $4,900 and $5,500, respectively, the World Gold Council survey confirmed that central bank purchases remain the major structural pillar of the market at 1,000 tons per year, with 74% of respondents expecting the dollar's share of global reserves to decline within five years.
A sell-off hits tech stocks
Wall Street's tech-related stocks closed lower at the end of yesterday's trading, with the Nasdaq Composite index falling 120.07 points, or 0.47%, to close at 25,358.60 points, under direct pressure from the decline of the stocks of the big four blue-chip companies "Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet".
The decline came after traders read Micron's strong results and signs of rising memory and storage chips as a financial burden to be borne by AI developers, leading the S&P 500 index to stabilize with a slight decline of 0.01%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average deviated from the path up 0.17%.
On the Asian front, a sell-off extended to regional stock exchanges on Friday morning, with Japan's Nikkei index closing sharply lower by 4.15% to record a sharp decline a day after hitting a historic high, and SoftBank Group led losses after reports that OpenAI's IPO could be postponed until next year.
In South Korea, the Kospi index reported a sharp decline of 5.8%, driven by broad profit-taking on semiconductor giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, while Chinese markets were followed by the Shanghai index down 2.09% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index by 1.93%, while Indian bourses closed due to a public holiday.
These simultaneous movements and turmoil in global financial markets underscore the sensitivity of technology and growth stocks to the annual US inflation data of 4.1%, as rising inflation repricing bond yields and increasing the cost of financing future AI projects.
Although oil exports this week hit their highest levels since the start of military operations on February 28, the return of tankers still faces serious security concerns that have pushed the dollar to new highs and the Japanese yen hovering near its lowest level since 1986 at 161.69 yen to the dollar, putting global monetary policymakers facing extremely complex trading conditions in the second half of the year.
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