Just noticed gold's looking pretty weak this week despite holding up on Friday. Spot gold sitting around $4,697 an ounce but down about 2.6% since the start of the week, which is interesting after that four-week rally we just had.

The real story seems to be crude oil going absolutely wild. Brent's up over 18% this week and hovering above $105 a barrel because the Strait of Hormuz situation isn't really resolving. Then you've got the Iran-Israel tensions keeping everyone on edge, plus that Lebanon ceasefire extension Trump announced on Thursday. The geopolitical uncertainty is definitely pushing energy prices higher, which is feeding into inflation worries and expectations that interest rates might stay elevated for longer.

On the technical side, CME Group made some moves on their margins - they cut initial margin on COMEX 100 gold futures down to 6% from 7%, and brought down the COMEX 5,000 silver futures margin to 11% from 14%. Silver itself dropped 0.1% to $75.36, while platinum lost 0.5% to touch $1,996.13.

There's also some economic data coming through the 0600 GMT slot with UK retail sales, then 0800 GMT will have the Germany Ifo numbers and later the US consumer sentiment data. These could add more pressure depending on what they show. The labor market's still holding up okay based on jobless claims, but the energy shock from all this Middle East stuff is definitely creating headwinds across manufacturing and services.