Good morning. All eyes on Islamabad today. VP Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner are sitting down with Pakistani mediators and Iranian counterparts for the first real negotiation round of this ceasefire, and the market is holding its breath. Futures are basically flat, S&P -0.04%, Dow -0.14%, Nasdaq barely green at +0.02%, which tells you nobody wants to take a big position ahead of this.

Oil is creeping back up. WTI closed yesterday at $97.87, up 3%, and Brent settled around $95.92. The ceasefire exists on paper but Hormuz is still functionally controlled by Iran, tanker traffic remains a trickle, and Goldman put out a note saying Brent stays above $100 through 2026 if the strait doesn't fully reopen within a month. That's the number the market is watching now.

Europe pulled back yesterday after the ceasefire euphoria faded. Stoxx 600 fell 0.4%, banks got hit as bond yields rebounded, and industrials like Airbus and Siemens dropped over 2% on natural gas prices. Energy names were the outlier, Eni and TotalEnergies up 3% as oil bounced.

US markets kept the streak going though. S&P closed at 6,824, Dow at 48,185, Nasdaq at 22,822, all up about half a percent. That's a seven-day winning run with the S&P tracking its biggest weekly gain in almost a year. But the conviction is thinning.

Asia is cautiously up this morning. Nikkei added 1.75%, Hang Seng gained 1.1% to 26,032. Following the lead more than setting it.

Crypto is quiet. BTC around $71,100, drifting lower, ETH near $2,184, both giving back the ceasefire pop gradually. Gold at $4,743 holding steady as the safe-haven bid stays sticky. The metals still don't trust this truce.

The Islamabad talks are the calendar today. Everything else is noise until we hear something from that room.

We'll be watching.