Oil prices dropped by more than $4 a barrel on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump refrained from launching a fresh attack on Iran and instead signalled a willingness to pursue a quick agreement aimed at ending Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Crude oil price on August 3

Brent crude futures fell $4.37, or 5%, to $83.56 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude declined $4.63, or 5.5%, to $80 a barrel.

The sharp decline followed a strong rally last month, when both contracts had gained more than 20% after fighting between the U.S. and Iran resumed. Concerns over attacks on several tankers near Oman also heightened security risks, discouraging shippers from entering the Gulf to load crude.

Also read: Trump’s closest Gulf allies are frustrated with his Iran war strategy: Report

In a possible sign of easing tensions, Trump said late on Saturday on his Truth Social platform that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had sought time to finalise an agreement that would result in “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the crucial waterway and bring “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat”. Trump added that he had agreed to cancel the attack to allow for a rapid agreement, and said Israel had also committed to the effort.

On Sunday, OPEC+ approved an increase of around 188,000 barrels per day in its oil production quota for September, marking the completion of the rollback of one tranche of its voluntary output cuts.
However, the additional supply has had little effect on the market so far. Export disruptions from the Gulf, along with supply issues involving Russia and Kazakhstan amid the Iran and Ukraine wars, have meant that the group’s successive monthly production hikes for most of this year have largely remained on paper.

Analysts hopeful?

The trajectory of oil prices will largely depend on the duration of the supply disruption. JPMorgan estimates that every additional month of disruption could lift Brent prices by about $7 to $8 a barrel. If the disruption extends for three months, the bank expects the monthly average Brent price to reach around $114 a barrel.Goldman Sachs has also warned that Brent could rise to $120 a barrel if shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit route, continue. However, its base case remains that tensions in the Middle East will eventually ease.

Read more: Oil prices surge 20% in July as US-Iran war heightens Strait of Hormuz tensions

Based on that assumption, Goldman Sachs expects Brent to average $80 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $75 a barrel next year. Even so, the bank said the risks to its forecasts remain “tilted to the upside”, citing the possibility that shipping disruptions could continue in both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

“The direction of our outlook is unchanged; the path and the timeline have shifted. We still expect oil to cool as we move into 2027, for three reasons: supply outside the conflict zone is expanding, with OPEC+ raising production targets, the UAE at record output and non-OPEC barrels responding to price, said Anindya Bannerjee, Head of Commodity Research at Kotak Securities.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Japan and the US have confirmed that they jointly intervened last week to halt a slide in the yen to a fresh 40-year low.

The joint intervention is the first since 2011, when both countries took coordinated action to weaken the yen after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit eastern Japan.

Both Japan’s finance ministry and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said that they will not hesitate to conduct joint interventions in the future.

It highlights both countries’ efforts to prevent a sell-off in the yen and Japanese government bonds from having an impact on the global economy, including potentially helping to push up borrowing costs for Washington.

“The United States agreed to participate in the coordinated intervention because it serves its national interests by offering the prospect of significant benefits at a low cost,” Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics told the BBC.

The two countries are expected to continue to intervene “intermittently in a coordinated manner for some time”, he added.

“Even if the actual amount of intervention is not particularly large, the prolonged sense of vigilance regarding intervention will be effective in deterring speculators.”

The yen is historically weak mainly due to Japan having much lower central bank interest rates than other major economies like the US. That makes the Japanese currency less attractive to international investors.

The Bank of Japan last raised interest rates in June, as it increased its main rate to 1% – the highest level since September 1995. In comparison, the US Federal Reserve’s benchmark rate is in a range of 3.50% to 3.75%.

Japan also faces a decades-long slide in its working-age population, low productivity and a heavy reliance on energy imports that are priced in US dollars.

On Monday, Japan’s finance ministry said Friday’s intervention with the US Treasury Department “countered excessive volatility and disorderly movements in the Japanese yen in recent months”.

The “coordinated foreign exchange actions countered disorderly yen movements,” Bessent said in a social media post.

“We strongly support Japan’s decisive market and monetary steps to correct the substantial undervaluation of the yen,” he added.

“They have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help. And we’re always there for Japan,” US President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday.

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Gold rose on Monday as oil prices tumbled after U.S. President Donald Trump held off on a fresh attack on Iran in hopes of a swift deal, slightly easing concerns about inflation and higher interest rates.

FUNDAMENTALS

Spot gold was up 0.7% at $4,067.06 per ounce, as of 0023 GMT. U.S. gold futures rose 0.9% to $4,065.60.

Trump said ‌late on Saturday ⁠on ⁠his Truth Social platform that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked for time to complete a deal that would lead to “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat”.

Oil prices fell more than $5 a barrel at Monday’s open. [O/R]

Gold has come under pressure since the start of the U.S.-Iran conflict, as a war-driven ⁠rise in ‌inflation could prompt central banks to raise interest rates. Although bullion is traditionally viewed as a hedge against inflation, its appeal tends ⁠to diminish in a high-interest-rate environment because it does not yield interest.

Three Federal Reserve officials who dissented at last week’s policy meeting in favour of an interest rate hike expressed concern on Friday that without an immediate increase in short-term borrowing costs, inflation will stay stuck above the Fed’s 2% target, where it has been for more than five years.
Market participants will also focus on a slew ‌of U.S. jobs reports due this week, including job openings data, the ADP employment report, weekly jobless claims and the nonfarm payrolls report.
Spot silver gained 0.7% ⁠to $58.02 per ounce, platinum climbed 0.7% to $1,653.78, and palladium firmed 1.5% to $1,293.00.
Russia’s Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest palladium producer, reported on Friday that its revenue and net profit in the first six months had sharply increased.

DATA/EVENTS (GMT)

0030 Japan S&P Global Mfg PMI Final SA Jul

0145 China RatingDog Manufacturing PMI Final Jul

0750 France S&P Manufacturing PMI Jul

0755 Germany S&P Manufacturing PMI Jul

0800 EU S&P MFG Final PMI Jul

0830 UK S&P GLOBAL MANUFACTURING PMI Jul

1345 US S&P Global Mfg PMI Final Jul

1400 US ISM Manufacturing PMI Jul

Owners of a popular bitcoin storage device are being urged to protect their cryptocurrency after security researchers said a software flaw may have allowed attackers to steal roughly $70 million worth of bitcoin in less than an hour.

Forbes first reported the attacks, which researchers at Galaxy Research say drained more than 1,000 bitcoin from 1,196 digital wallets in just 41 minutes on July 30.

Galaxy later identified two additional suspected waves of suspicious activity, bringing the estimated losses to nearly $89 million.

CRASHSTEALER MAC MALWARE STEALS PASSWORDS AND WALLETS

The firm cautioned that its findings are based on blockchain analysis and that it has not confirmed every affected wallet was created using the vulnerable software.

The issue involves Coldcard, a handheld device many cryptocurrency investors use to store bitcoin offline instead of leaving it on a cryptocurrency exchange. Often called a “hardware wallet,” the device is designed to keep hackers from accessing a user’s bitcoin over the internet.

According to a security advisory from Block’s Bitcoin Engineering and Security team, a coding mistake in certain versions of Coldcard may have weakened one of the wallet’s key security features.

PAIDWORK BREACH EXPOSES 23M USER RECORDS

Block said the software bug may have made some of those recovery phrases predictable enough for sophisticated attackers to figure them out under certain circumstances, potentially allowing them to steal bitcoin without ever physically touching the wallet.

The company said it released its findings because it believes the attacks are still happening, though researchers cautioned they are continuing to study exactly how the vulnerability is being exploited.

Canadian company Coinkite, which makes Coldcard, has since released a software update to prevent the problem from affecting newly created wallets.

KARR BLUETOOTH FLAW EXPOSES 2.2M CARS TO THEFT RISK

However, the company warned that simply installing the update will not protect people who already created a recovery phrase using the affected software.

Instead, Coinkite is urging those users to create a brand-new recovery phrase using the updated software and move their bitcoin into the newly secured wallet.

“Updating the firmware does not repair a seed that was generated by affected firmware,” the company said in a security advisory. “A new seed must be generated and the funds migrated to the new wallet.”

Coinkite also warned that moving the same recovery phrase into another wallet does not solve the problem because the weakness follows the recovery phrase itself, not the physical device.

Coinkite CEO Rodolfo Novak issued a public apology on X, saying the company was “heartbroken” and taking “full accountability for the firmware bug.”

“I’m sorry and I’m devastated,” Novak wrote. “Our team is heartbroken about yesterday’s news.”

Novak urged customers to act immediately.

“If you generated a seed using a Coldcard wallet, move your funds now, using our updated best practices, before reading further,” he wrote.

He also asked the public to help spread the warning.

“If you know anyone who owns a Coldcard, please make sure they see this,” Novak wrote. “Some affected users may not be watching social media right now, and every hour matters.”

Novak said Coinkite is still working to determine exactly how many people may have been affected and plans to publish a detailed explanation of what went wrong after its investigation is complete.

“We do not have full attribution or scope of the issue yet, and we won’t speculate until our full technical evaluation is complete,” Novak wrote.

The company said it will also help affected customers who want to file police reports or insurance claims and is cooperating with blockchain investigators and law enforcement agencies.

The warning quickly spread across the cryptocurrency industry.

“If you’re using a COLDCARD, any version firmware or MK, migrate your funds immediately,” Jan3 CEO Samson Mow wrote on X. “If you know someone who is, let them know ASAP… Attacks are ongoing so do it quickly.”

While the initial warning focused on older Coldcard devices, Coinkite has since expanded the list of affected products to include additional models and software versions.

The company also said customers who created their recovery phrase using at least 50 private dice rolls are not affected by this specific flaw alone. However, Coinkite recommends that anyone who is unsure how their wallet was set up create a new recovery phrase and move their funds as a precaution.

Block emphasized that none of its own products or customers are affected by the vulnerability. The company said it published its findings after working with anonymous security researchers and receiving reports from Coldcard users.

Separately, developers of Jack Dorsey’s Bitkey wallet said they are investigating a different reported issue involving their product but are not advising customers to stop using the wallet.

“Our recommendation is to continue to use your Bitkey normally,” Bitkey developer Clay Garrett wrote on X.

Garrett said the reported issue would require “exceptional circumstances” to exploit and would not give an attacker enough information to steal customers’ funds.

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“Our assessment is this presents no risk of remote drains or immediate funds loss,” Garrett wrote.

FOX Business reached out to Coinkite, Galaxy Research, Block, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and Chainalysis for comment but did not immediately receive a response.