Gold Falls Below $4,000 as Hormuz Oil Hits $117

Spot gold finished Friday near $3,995.81 an ounce, down 0.70%, slipping under $4,000 as Brent crude traded at $117.23. Silver was near $53.896, down 1.26%, and bullion was headed for a weekly loss of more than 3.5%, its worst since June.

Tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz hit a wartime high in October, the setup that usually brings a gold bid. The same shock is lifting oil, consumer inflation expectations, and the odds of a December Federal Reserve hike, and the metal is paying for that chain.

FRIDAY’S LATE TAPE

• Spot gold: $3,995.81 an ounce, down 0.70%, after an Asian low near $3,986, the weakest since July.
• Spot silver: $53.896, down 1.26%, after a 2026 low near $53.70.
• Crude: Brent $117.23; Nymex WTI $103.07, with December WTI up 3.77% on the week at $102.88.
• U.S. 10-year: near the 5.0% area Friday, after a Thursday close at 4.952%.

December gold futures were $4,015.00, down 3.94% on the week, or $164.68. That leaves spot about 28.6% below the Jan. 29 record of $5,594.82. First resistance on the cash market is $4,075. First support is $3,963, then $3,946, with a deeper objective at $3,890.

Gold Breaks $4,000 While Crude Holds $117

Brent’s Thursday settlement of $113.17 was the highest since May 4. Friday’s push through $117 came after Houthi strikes on Saudi targets, including a drone near the Shaybah field and a hit on King Fahd Airport in Dammam, with two deaths reported at each site, and after reports that Washington could resume strikes on Iran after the Nov. 3 midterms. No new U.S. or Israeli operation has been confirmed.

North American stocks still sold off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 652.82 points, or 1.24%, to 52,215.16. The S&P 500 lost 39.75 points, or 0.52%, to 7,623.68. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 53.52 points, or 0.21%, to 25,955.34, and the Russell 2000 dropped 8.13 points, or 0.29%, to 2,775.90. For the week the S&P 500 lost about 0.5% and the Nasdaq 0.7%, while the Dow gained 0.4%.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 fell about 0.3% to 635.77, a weekly loss of around 1.4%. Germany’s DAX dropped about 0.8%, France’s CAC 40 about 0.4% to 7,782.82, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 about 0.3% to 10,690.36. Canada’s S&P/TSX Composite Index finished about 0.34% lower, with energy shares up and gold miners down. Energy was the clean winner on the tape. Bullion was not.

October Sets a Hormuz Attack Record

Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who keeps a maritime attacks map for the region, has logged 28 confirmed and reported attacks in the strait and nearby waters in October and 113 since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28. “October has seen the highest number of ship attacks on record,” Raydan said.

The aim is to hit as much as they can and make sure that they keep the southern route appear very unsafe and keep the risks very high.

Noam Raydan, senior fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, at the Lloyd’s List Outlook Forum

The International Maritime Organization’s ledger is a separate series. United Against Nuclear Iran, citing the IMO, counts 120 maritime incidents and 24 deaths among seafarers across the Persian Gulf, the strait, and the Gulf of Oman since the war began. The IMO list, checked against MarineTraffic, shows more than 30 very large crude carriers damaged, including 11 in October. Each of those ships can carry about 2 million barrels. That is about 3.5% of a global VLCC fleet of more than 900.

THE HORMUZ COUNT

Greece-based Marisks called Oct. 5 through Oct. 11 the busiest attack week of the war, with a dozen ships hit. Lloyd’s List counted 104 non-Iranian-linked vessels still transiting that week, down from 126 the week before, yet 31% above August’s weekly average. Kpler put strait and Gulf of Oman volumes near 14 million barrels a day in the week to Oct. 18, about 82% of the pre-war pace, up from 11.6 million barrels a day, or 68%, the week before. Pre-war traffic ran about 138 vessels a day.

U.S. Central Command says the blockade on Iranian ports, reinstated July 14 and now past 100 days, has denied Iran at least $25 billion of crude exports. UANI has identified at least 53 tankers laden with Iranian oil sitting along the coast, many as floating storage, and has not tracked a crude-laden tanker that left the Gulf of Oman and slipped U.S. enforcement since July 12.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Friday that two VLCCs strayed from designated lanes, hit mines on an unauthorized southern route, and were left immobilized with more than 4.5 million barrels aboard after the crews left. That claim has not been independently confirmed.

The Sharpest Price Increases Since 2022

Friday’s U.S. data did not give the Fed an easy off-ramp. S&P Global’s flash composite PMI eased to 57.6 from 58.4, still the second-strongest reading since March 2022. Manufacturing rose to 56.0 from 55.9, above a 55.5 forecast. Services fell to 57.9 from 58.8, a touch under 58.0. New orders ticked up to 58.2, the highest since March 2022. The output-price gauge jumped to 59.8 from 58.4, the highest since August 2022. Supplier delivery times dropped to 38.1 from 40.9, a more than four-year low. Factory hiring was the strongest since March 2012.

FRIDAY’S INFLATION PRINTS

Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the output readings fit GDP growing at a 5.0% annualized pace after a 4.0% signal for the third quarter. He tied the price jump to oil.

Cost pressures remain a key concern, notably as the renewed surge in oil prices reverberates through to impact a wide variety of goods and services. Supply chain bottlenecks have meanwhile intensified, and order book backlogs are growing, making it easier for companies to pass higher costs on to customers. The result is the sharpest increase in selling prices for over four years to a pace that indicates consumer price inflation is likely to rise further above the Fed’s target in the coming months.

Chris Williamson, chief business economist, S&P Global Market Intelligence

The University of Michigan’s final October sentiment index was revised up to 48.0 from a preliminary 46.3, a shade under September’s 48.1 and 10.4% below October 2025’s 53.6. Current conditions fell to 46.7 from 50.9. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 4.7% from 4.6%, and longer-run expectations to 3.5% from 3.4%, both the highest since May. Year-ahead expectations were 3.4% in February, before the Iran war. Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, warned of risks that inflation becomes entrenched after five years above target.

Why Gold Fell While Oil Rallied

A Hormuz scare usually supports bullion as a hedge against war and energy shocks. This tape ran the other way because the oil spike is showing up in selling prices and in household inflation views, and those prints keep a December rate increase in play. CME FedWatch on Friday put the chance of at least one more increase by December near 78%. The Oct. 27-28 meeting is still priced as a hold. The federal funds target is 3.75% to 4.00% after the Sept. 16 hike.

Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at StoneX, said earlier in the week that inflation and Fed rates were the stories gold was fighting, and that Treasuries looked like the better safety asset for now. Monte Safieddine, head of market research at Capital.com, said speculators were trying to defend $4,000 because a clean break would mean the market had stopped pricing rate relief and started pricing sticky inflation, high yields, and a stronger dollar.

Gold is a non-yielding asset. When the 10-year sits near 5.0% and consumers see 4.7% inflation over the next year, the opportunity cost of holding bars rises even if tankers are on fire. Silver takes a second hit: it is more tied to factories, and high energy costs plus tight money weigh on that demand. First silver resistance is $54.530, then $55.770. Next support is $53.460, then $52.410 and $51.390.

A 19-Basis-Point Yield Drop Still Sold Metal

The ugly tell was Thursday, not Friday. An unwind in AI-linked stocks, Meta down about 7% on a plan for a new non-voting share class to fund spending, and a 6.7% drop in the Philadelphia semiconductor index, its biggest since June, sent the Nasdaq down 2.6% and the S&P 500 down 1.2%. The 10-year yield fell 19 basis points to 4.952%, the largest one-day drop since March 2023 and the first close below 5% since Sept. 22. Gold still fell.

WHAT MOVED ON THURSDAY

• The equity shock: Meta about 7%, the semiconductor index 6.7%, Nasdaq 2.6%, S&P 500 1.2%.
• The bond bid: 10-year yield down 19 basis points to 4.952%; 2-year down about 18 basis points.
• The metals tape: gold and silver sold off on the same day yields fell, a break from the usual inverse link.
• The oil tape: Brent’s $113.17 settlement, highest since May 4, with Friday still bid through $117.

That split is the irony in one session. A flight into Treasuries should have helped bullion. Traders instead sold metal to raise cash against equity losses, leaned on a firm dollar, and treated the December hike as still live. From Oct. 16 through Oct. 22 the 10-year still fell 13 basis points, from 5.09% to 4.96%. Friday’s bounce back toward 5.0%, plus the PMI and Michigan prints, put the rate channel back on top.

Silver Hits a 2026 Low

Silver’s weekly futures loss of 5.43% cut deeper than gold’s, and the cash market printed a 2026 low near $53.70 before settling near $53.896. In New Delhi the All India Sarafa Association put 99.9% gold at 1,46,100 rupees per 10 grams, down 1,900 rupees from Thursday, and silver at 2,02,000 rupees a kilogram, down 5,500, a third straight local decline. That drop lands on households already facing a campaign to skip gold jewelry for foreign weddings.

Joshua Tallis, a naval analyst at CNA, told the same New York shipping forum that Iran does not need to close the strait to move U.S. politics. Cheap drones and a tanker campaign raise diesel and gasoline costs, and Midwestern voters feel that before they feel a gold quote. Pipelines are not a clean escape hatch. Saudi shipments that shifted toward the Red Sea have been squeezed by Houthi attacks, and land sites take the same one-way drones as hulls.

Raydan’s read is that October shows what Iran can still do eight months into the war, and that Tehran is keeping some cards for later. Ships are still going through. The southern route is just priced as unsafe, which is enough to keep a geopolitical premium in crude and, through crude, in the Fed path.

December Is Already in the Price

The Federal Open Market Committee meets Oct. 27-28, with the decision at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday and Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 2:30 p.m. There are no new projections at this meeting. September PCE inflation is due Thursday, Oct. 29, at 8:30 a.m. EDT, on the same morning as the first look at third-quarter GDP. Weekly jobless claims printed 194,000 on Friday.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The October meeting: A hold at 3.75% to 4.00% is the base case. The statement and Warsh’s answers on December are the live risk for gold.
• The December market: CME FedWatch near 78% for at least one more hike by December, after Friday’s PMI and Michigan prints.
• The oil premium: Brent at $117.23 and WTI at $103.07 with Hormuz attacks at a wartime high and Houthi strikes on Saudi soil.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Post-midterm strikes: Reports that the United States could resume attacks on Iranian energy, nuclear, and missile sites after Nov. 3 have not been matched by a confirmed operation.
• Friday’s two VLCCs: The IRGC mine-and-fire account of two abandoned supertankers has not been independently verified.
• A Hormuz closure: Traffic is lower and darker, not stopped. Alternative pipelines have not replaced the strait’s volumes.

Softer PCE would undercut the December hike and could lift gold through lower yields and a softer dollar. A hot print would do the opposite and keep pressure on the $3,946 to $3,963 support zone. Gold goes into that sequence under $4,000, with Brent above $117 and year-ahead inflation expectations at 4.7%.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and market analysis for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell gold, silver, crude oil, Treasury securities, or any other instrument, and it is not a prediction of Federal Reserve policy. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or commodities broker who can judge their own holdings, time horizon, and risk before acting on any price level or meeting date discussed here. Figures, attack counts, and policy odds reflect the cited surveys, exchanges, and trackers as of the dates given and will change with the next print, the next incident, and the Oct. 28 decision.