Gold traded at $4,791 an ounce on Thursday, off March's $5,400 peak but still at a level that would have been unthinkable two years ago. [1] The price is the quiet dissent in a week when oil reversed on a Trump hint about weekend Iran talks and equity markets ticked higher on the same sentence. Gold's safe-haven bid has not unwound. It has not wanted to.

The divergence is instructive. Brent fell 1.35% to $98.05 Friday morning on ceasefire optimism. The S&P absorbed the message. Gold, by definition the market that refuses to forget what actually happened, held its record range because the war that justified the original run higher has not ended in any form the price can recognize. [2] The ceasefire between the United States and Iran — if one is still operational by the weekend — is framed as logistical rather than political. The blockade continues. Hormuz remains porous only for Chinese-flagged tonnage. None of this produces the kind of structural clarity that unwinds a four-month safe-haven trade.

Central banks are also still buying. Emerging-market reserve accumulation has not slowed, and the dollar's status as the reserve currency is being adjudicated in spreadsheets by the same governments that signed the G7 communiqué calling for Hormuz to reopen.

Gold at $4,791 is not a technical level. It is a footnote to the official story — the one the finance press quotes and the metal refuses to read.

-- THEO KAPLAN, New York