Thirteen days into the Iran war, commodity markets on Friday delivered their most muted session since the conflict began — not because the crisis has eased, but because markets have entered a phase of exhausted uncertainty where neither bulls nor bears have enough new information to move prices decisively. Energy holds firm. Metals drift. And every trader on every exchange is watching the same thing: whether Mojtaba Khamenei — Iran’s newly installed supreme leader following the assassination of Ali Khamenei in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes — means what he says about keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed.
He said it again on Friday. So did Donald Trump, in the opposite direction. And so the waiting continues.
Here is every commodity, what it is doing, and why.
Crude Oil: ₹8,838 | +₹34 | +0.39%
Crude is the one commodity that has earned its gains over the last two weeks and is holding them with conviction. Friday’s 0.39% rise is modest compared to Thursday’s 6% surge, but it comes on top of a price level — ₹8,838 on MCX, translating to approximately $95 to $96 per barrel in global terms — that would have seemed extreme at the start of February.
Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao laid out the forward map on Friday with unusual clarity. U.S. crude has broken above resistance at $94.90 — the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the entire uptrend from $55.27 to $119.40 — and is now targeting a range of $100.75 to $102.45 per barrel based on an inverted head-and-shoulders pattern. The longer wave analysis points to $104.26, and the wave structure suggests the market is in wave 5 of a larger impulse — a wave pattern theoretically capable of travelling above the $119.40 previous high.
Immediate support sits at $95.26, with the more meaningful floor at $93.56. As long as crude holds above $93.56, the bullish technical case remains intact. A break below that level opens a pullback to $90.82 to $91.98 — still dramatically higher than pre-war levels.
The fundamental driver has not changed. Iran’s new supreme leader Khamenei pledged on Friday to keep the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed while simultaneously warning that Tehran could open additional fronts if U.S. and Israeli attacks continue. That is not de-escalation language. That is escalation optionality — and crude markets price optionality.
Natural Gas: ₹299.6 | +₹2.0 | +0.67%
Natural gas is the quiet outperformer on Friday, gaining 0.67% — more in percentage terms than crude. The driver is the same supply anxiety that is supporting oil, but with an additional layer specific to gas: LNG from Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter, is almost entirely dependent on Hormuz transit. Every day the strait remains closed is another day of global LNG supply disruption, and the market continues pricing that reality into gas futures.
India’s own LNG situation — with the Oil Minister confirming on Thursday that supplies are being secured from the U.S., Norway, Canada, Algeria and Russia — represents exactly the kind of supply rerouting that keeps prices elevated even when physical volumes are being partially restored. Alternative supply costs more, takes longer, and arrives via longer routes. The price premium for non-Hormuz gas is real and persistent.
Gold: ₹1,60,358 | +₹87 | +0.05%
Gold’s 0.05% gain on Friday is more interesting than it looks. The metal rose to approximately $5,110 per ounce in international markets after two consecutive down sessions — a technical bounce that masks a more complex fundamental picture.
Gold is caught between two forces that are pulling in opposite directions. The geopolitical risk premium — the safe-haven demand generated by an active war involving the U.S., Israel and Iran — should be strongly bullish for gold. And it was, in the first days of the conflict. But the same war is pushing oil toward $100, which pushes inflation higher, which pushes the Federal Reserve toward keeping rates elevated for longer rather than cutting them. Higher rates for longer are bearish for gold because they raise the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset.
The Fed rate cut timeline has already moved. Markets now see no chance of a rate reduction at next week’s meeting — which was already expected — but more significantly, the probability of a cut later in 2026 has fallen to approximately 70% as rising oil-driven inflation expectations push back the timeline. Fed rate cut expectations moving from July to September is not a dramatic shift, but it is a direction change that gold markets are pricing with caution.
The net result is a metal that wants to go up on geopolitics but is being held back by monetary policy expectations — producing the flat-to-marginally-positive movement visible on Friday. Gold is heading for back-to-back weekly losses despite an active war, which is the clearest possible signal of how much the inflation-rates dynamic is weighing on the safe-haven trade.
Silver: ₹2,68,558 | +₹596 | +0.22%
Silver’s 0.22% gain mirrors gold’s bounce from two down sessions, but silver’s weekly picture is essentially flat — the metal has gone nowhere on net over the week despite extraordinary geopolitical volatility. Silver at approximately $85 per ounce in international markets is being pulled by the same gold dynamics plus its own industrial demand headwinds.
The dollar has strengthened amid Middle East uncertainties — a stronger dollar makes dollar-denominated commodities more expensive for non-dollar buyers, suppressing demand. Silver’s industrial component — it is used in solar panels, electronics and electrical contacts — is facing the same demand uncertainty that is weighing on copper and other base metals as markets price in the possibility of global economic slowdown driven by sustained high energy costs.
Copper: ₹1,200.55 | -₹1.75 | -0.15%
Copper’s modest decline is the most economically meaningful number on Friday’s MCX board, because copper is the commodity that most reliably reflects what markets think about global growth. It is used in construction, manufacturing, electrical infrastructure and electronics — everything that expands when economies grow and contracts when they slow.
The message copper is sending on Friday is cautious. The Iran war has not crashed copper — the 0.15% decline is negligible — but it has definitively removed the optimism that was building in copper markets through late 2025 on the back of AI infrastructure buildout demand and Chinese stimulus expectations. When energy costs surge and global growth outlooks deteriorate simultaneously, copper pauses. That is what it is doing.
Zinc: ₹324.85 | -₹0.50 | -0.15%
Zinc echoes copper’s message in smaller absolute terms. The metal is used primarily in galvanising steel for construction and infrastructure. The same demand uncertainty weighing on copper applies to zinc — with the additional factor that zinc smelting is extremely energy-intensive, and higher energy costs squeeze zinc production margins in ways that can eventually support prices from the supply side. For now the demand concern is dominating the supply support, leaving zinc marginally lower.
Aluminium: ₹348.55 | -₹1.40 | -0.40%
Aluminium is Friday’s weakest performer among the metals, declining 0.40%. This is somewhat counterintuitive because aluminium is the most energy-intensive metal to produce — higher energy costs should theoretically support aluminium prices by squeezing supply. The reason for the decline is that aluminium demand is equally sensitive to the economic slowdown risk that high energy prices create. Aviation — a major aluminium consumer — is already seeing disruption from Middle East flight cancellations documented in the IEA’s March report. Automotive production, another large aluminium user, faces its own demand uncertainty as consumer confidence wavers.
The production cost support and the demand destruction concern are roughly cancelling each other out, with the demand concern marginally winning on Friday.
The Iron Ore Signal From Asia
Away from the MCX board, iron ore on the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China rose 3% to 817 yuan per tonne in early Asian trading on Friday, according to Nanhua Futures analysts — supported by near-term concerns about spot liquidity. The analysts noted that valuations have been high and steel fundamentals remain lukewarm, suggesting the move is more technical than fundamental and investors should consider taking profit at elevated levels. The iron ore move is not directly connected to the Iran war but reflects the broader commodity positioning across Asian markets on a Friday that has seen more questions than answers.
The Bigger Picture: Day 13 of a War With No Exit
Friday’s muted commodity session is best understood as a market collectively holding its breath. Thirteen days in, the positions are clear. Trump says preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons outweighs oil price concerns. Khamenei says Hormuz stays closed and additional fronts can be opened. Neither side has signalled any movement toward negotiation. Goldman Sachs has doubled its disruption assumption. The IEA has called this the largest supply disruption in history. The emergency reserve release is a stop-gap that markets are no longer treating as a solution.
What moves commodities from here is not technical analysis or positioning — it is the answer to one question that nobody on any trading floor can currently answer: how long does this last? Until that question has an answer, crude holds its gains, gold drifts, metals wait, and every MCX screen looks roughly like it did on Thursday — which is to say, dramatically different from how it looked two weeks ago.