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The S&P 500 closed the week at $7,125, fractionally below its all-time high of $7,148, having staged the fastest rebound from an 8%+ correction in fifty years. The VIX sits at 17.51, down from a 30-day peak above 31. Oil at $87.76 is $27 off its monthly high of $114.94. By every market-priced metric, the Iran story is over.
Then on Saturday the US Navy seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. By Sunday, Iran had re-closed the Strait of Hormuz. By Monday morning, US equity futures were down 0.5–0.7%, WTI was bid 5–8% higher in early trade, and the VIX had spiked back toward 30 on a failed breakdown.
This is the week's actual story: markets priced de-escalation as durable. It wasn't. The April 22 ceasefire deadline expires with negotiations stalled, Kevin Warsh testifies before Senate Banking on April 21, and the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group just transited Suez to form a three-carrier force in the region. The complacency trade has a hard test in front of it.
Gold sits at $4,812, up 5.18% over thirty days and 44.58% over the past year, even as the VIX collapsed and equities ripped. That's the tell. In a clean risk-on tape, gold should have given back more. It hasn't, because the IMF's warning this week about the erosion of Treasury safety premium — annual deficits at $2 trillion, interest costs touching $1 trillion — keeps the structural bid intact. Gold is 14.48% off its 52-week peak of $5,627, having corrected from January extremes, but the $4,799 50-day EMA is now acting as support. RSI at 52.2 is neutral; the metal has room to run if Hormuz stays closed. The gold-silver ratio at 59.62 flags silver as the cyclical lever — and silver, at $80.04, is +13.36% YTD but still in the $50–$100 trading band Bloomberg highlighted last week. VueFi's proprietary models track multiple distinct demand drivers for precious metals separately, which matters when central bank flows and ETF flows diverge.
The index is up 3.47% on the week, 9.51% on the month, and 4.08% YTD, sitting 0.31% below its all-time high. RSI at 73.2 is outright overbought. Forward P/E at 21.59 with an equity risk premium of 4.46% leaves no cushion if 10Y yields push back toward 4.5%. The bull case this week was clean: cooler-than-expected March PPI (+0.5% headline, +0.1% core), claims at 210K, Empire State at 11.0 from -0.2, Philly Fed at 26.7. The bear case is what happened Saturday night. If WTI breaks $100 and holds, the disinflation narrative that justified the 11-day ramp dies with it. Q1 earnings peak this week (Apr 21–25) and FOMC minutes drop Apr 23 — both will be read through a Hormuz lens.
QQQ at $26,671 is up 5.07% on the week and 11.60% on the month — the canonical numbers, not the stale "-4.1%" from corpus articles written during the early-April Iran selloff. RSI at 74.3, 10.04% above the 200-day EMA, forward P/E 24.62. This is a fully recovered, fully extended index. The structural worry: equal-weight Nasdaq-100 outperformed cap-weighted during the Iran drawdown, exposing concentration risk that hasn't gone away. If oil reignites a "no cuts in 2026" repricing, mega-cap multiples are the most vulnerable point on the curve. The vessel-seizure tape on Sunday already rotated traders out of software into semis — the hedge against energy is silicon, not software.
The Russell at $2,777 is up 13.88% on the month, 11.89% YTD, and just 0.58% off its 52-week peak. RSI at 72.8, 12.25% above the 200-day EMA — the steepest premium of any major US index. This is where the rate-cut and reflation trades are converging. IWM saw its largest weekly inflow since 2023 last week per ETF flow data. The valuation re-rating is real but stretched: forward P/E (positive-earnings convention) at 25.74. The thesis breaker is simple — if the Hormuz re-closure pushes WTI above $100 and holds, small-cap consumer exposure cracks first. Watch Q1 small-cap earnings starting Apr 25.
EFA at $69.62 is up 12.22% on the month and 11.45% YTD, beating the S&P decisively. Forward P/E 14.86 versus S&P's 21.59 is a structural discount that finally drew flows as the dollar weakened. But the news flow is ugly: ECB signaling fewer cuts on energy-driven sticky inflation, European nat gas up 6–11% on Sunday's Hormuz re-closure, eurozone PMIs in contraction, and the Trump administration's Russia-Ukraine policy reversal raising European security risk. If the dollar reverses on safe-haven flows, the EAFE outperformance that's powered the YTD trade unwinds quickly.
EM at $59.17 is up 12.58% on the month and 10.07% YTD, sitting at its 52-week peak. The driver is mechanical: DXY at 98.28 in the lower quartile of its 1Y range. RSI at 70.8, forward P/E 15.00. China's Q1 GDP came in at 5.3% YoY, and the PBoC held rates steady — confidence in domestic demand even as the IMF's April WEO trimmed global growth to 3.1% and flagged EM as the most exposed to Middle East energy spillovers. The trade is working until two things break: the dollar, or oil.
TLT at $87.05 is down 0.55% on the year and 5.58% off its 52-week peak. The week's defining piece was the IMF's bluntest language yet on US fiscal trajectory — $2 trillion annual deficits, $1 trillion interest costs, "time running out for an orderly solution." That phrase, from the Fund, is not normal. The 30Y at 4.93% is pinned near the upper end of its range. Real 10Y yield at 1.93% keeps duration unattractive even as nominal yields look fat. Credit is a different story: HY OAS at 2.86% and IG OAS at 0.81% are both at 30-day tights. Risky debt has outperformed Treasuries through the entire wartime period — exactly inverted from what a textbook risk-off regime would prescribe.
The bond market is sending two contradictory messages: long-duration Treasuries have lost their hedge property, but corporate credit spreads have not flinched. Both can't be right indefinitely.
Bitcoin at $74,829 is down 14.48% YTD and 40.75% off its 52-week peak of $126,296. MVRV at 1.40, realized price at $54,261, mining cost at $80,468 — the entire cohort of marginal miners is now below cost. Yet whales added roughly 270,000 BTC in 30 days per Glassnode-type cohort data, the largest accumulation streak since 2013. Fear & Greed at 29 says retail isn't there. Ethereum at $2,302 is down 22.41% YTD, with the eth/btc ratio at 0.03 — multi-year lows. The Kelp DAO $292M exploit on April 18 is a reminder that DeFi tail risk remains live. ETF weekly flows of +$1.95B show institutional buying is still on. VueFi's proprietary models weigh on-chain accumulation against macro liquidity differently across timeframes — that divergence is exactly what's playing out now.
VNQ at $96.71 is up 8.97% on the month and 9.29% YTD, sitting 0.10% off its 52-week peak. RSI at 74.2 — overbought and through the upper Bollinger band. The cracks: existing-home sales fell 3.6% MoM in March, NAHB at 34, mortgage rates back at 6.3–6.5% after dipping below 6% in February. Office vacancy hit a record 22.6% in Q1 per industry reports, partly on federal lease terminations. The dividend yield spread at -0.60 says REITs are no longer pricing as a yield product. If 10Y Treasuries push toward 4.5% on a Hormuz oil shock, this is the asset class where the bid disappears first.
Credit is calm. Equity vol is twitchy. Treasury safety premium is dying. Three signals from one bond market, all pointing different directions. HY OAS at 2.86% says credit sees no recession. The MOVE Index collapsed from 115 to 65.89 — rate vol thinks it's all sorted. But TLT is down 5.58% from peak with the IMF using crisis language. The reconciliation is uncomfortable: investors are short duration and long credit and long equity and long gold simultaneously. That's not a coherent regime view. That's a market that has stopped pricing tail risk because the tail kept not arriving. Sunday's vessel seizure is the first test of whether anyone has actually been hedging, or just collecting carry while convincing themselves they were.
The second divergence: Fear & Greed at 29 with the S&P at all-time highs. Surveys say investors are scared. Prices say they're not. One of those is wrong.
The S&P sits 0.31% from a record. The VIX is at 17.51. Oil is bid 8% on Sunday futures. Three numbers, three different regimes — and one of them is wrong by Friday. The Signal tells you what happened. The Consensus tells you what to do about it. This week's Consensus includes proprietary cross-asset rotation analysis across all 11 assets we track, including how the models are weighting the Hormuz tail against the disinflation tailwind. See pricing →
Model Consensus
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Model Consensus
The Consensus
Bitcoin scored 7.1 — 4 of 4 models agree on Buy.
Per-asset narratives, fair value estimates, model disagreement analysis, and rotation recommendations for all 11 assets.
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