Oil heads for fourth straight monthly gain as Brent tops $115, while gold slips back below $4,000
Brent crude climbed above $115 a barrel on Friday, on course for a fourth consecutive monthly gain, as tanker attacks and missile interceptions around the Gulf kept supply risks high, while gold slipped back below $4,000 an ounce. Figures checked at about 2:30 pm PKT on Friday, 30 October 2026.
Oil prices climbed again on Friday, with Brent crude pushing above $115 a barrel and heading for a fourth consecutive monthly gain, as attacks on tankers and missile fire around the Gulf kept traders pricing in the risk of a serious supply disruption. Figures in this post were checked at about 2:30 pm Pakistan time on Friday, 30 October 2026.
Brent was trading above $115 a barrel in the daily market tables — one widely used snapshot put it at $116.09, up just over $2 on the day — while US West Texas Intermediate crude stood at about $103 a barrel. Reuters reported that both benchmarks are on track for a fourth monthly gain and their steepest monthly rise since July; WTI earlier touched about $105 in intraday trading before easing back.
The drivers are geopolitical rather than economic. A vessel was hit by an unidentified projectile near Khasab, off Oman, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency, after days in which Iran said tankers had struck mines and caught fire in and around the Strait of Hormuz, and Houthi missiles were intercepted over the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Washington, meanwhile, is reported to be weighing fresh strikes on Iran after next week's US midterm elections — a combination that keeps a risk premium firmly embedded in crude.
The strait is the market's central anxiety because of its scale: in normal times roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through it. Traders say even the possibility of a prolonged closure or repeated tanker incidents is enough to keep prices elevated, although the actual flow of cargoes, and therefore the real supply picture, can change quickly with each headline.
Precious metals moved the other way. Spot gold fell 0.9 percent to $3,982.85 an ounce by 0740 GMT, slipping back below the $4,000 level, with US December gold futures down 1 percent at $3,992.50. Silver dropped about 3 percent to around $50.74 an ounce and is now down roughly 14 percent in October, while platinum and palladium also declined. For bullion, October is shaping up as a second consecutive monthly loss.
The split between oil and gold reflects the inflation channel. Energy-led price pressure showed up in Thursday's US data, with the personal consumption expenditures index rising 0.5 percent in September, and markets tracked by the CME FedWatch tool now put the chance of a Federal Reserve rate increase at its December meeting at around 75 percent. Higher expected rates support the dollar and yields, which typically weighs on non-yielding gold even when geopolitical risk is high.
Equity markets were mixed in the same cross-currents. US stock futures pointed lower on Friday morning — the S&P 500 down about 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq-100 down about 1.7 percent amid a sell-off in technology shares — while in Mumbai the Sensex recovered about 0.7 percent by mid-afternoon, helped by information-technology stocks, despite the headwinds of expensive crude and weak global cues.
What traders watch next is a crowded calendar: further US economic data, the November 3 midterm elections and any weekend developments around Hormuz or US-Iran tensions could all move energy and metals sharply when markets reopen. As this week has shown, prices in both oil and gold can swing either way on a single headline, and the direction of the next move is a possibility to weigh, not a certainty to bank on.
This post is market news information only, not financial advice.
