Macroeconomic policies enter a vacuum period, with both geopolitical negotiations and logistics recovery facing obstacles; crude oil faces wide fluctuations, and gold short-term momentum builds for a correction?

First, the certainty of macroeconomic policies has created a short-term liquidity vacuum. The market has priced in a 100% probability that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged in April, completely erasing the near-term macro expectations gap. Against this backdrop, gold has lost its most important macro interest rate guidance, coupled with the dulled risk-averse sentiment from earlier, and the single-sided trend has come to an end. Funds are building a narrow oscillation range around the current price of $4,630, between $4,600 and $4,800, showing a strong technical oversold correction demand in the short term (75% probability of testing $4,700), but overall remaining in a wait-and-see period lacking new catalysts.

Second, the prolongation of the geopolitical deadlock provides underlying support for the energy market. Data shows that the expectation of substantive diplomatic meetings at the end of April has completely fallen through (only 5%), and the probability of the Strait of Hormuz returning to normal navigation before mid-May is as low as zero (13%). The "non-contact" political state is closely intertwined with the "normalization" of physical blockages, forcing logistics companies to accept higher reconstruction costs. Due to the dual tug-of-war between supply-side disruptions and macro demand resilience, June crude oil options show extremely expanded volatility boundaries: bets on a downward test of $80 (56%) and an upward breakthrough of $115 (54%) are roughly equal, indicating that crude oil may soon experience a wide fluctuation correction phase.