Crude at $101, Gold at $4,686: The Risk Premium Has a New Floor

WTI settled at $101.00 a barrel this evening, down a rounding-error 15 cents on the day. That is the headline, but it is not the story.

The story is that crude is sitting on a triple-digit handle while gold trades at $4,686.62 an ounce and US weekly crude production prints at 13.71 million barrels a day. Three numbers, one message: the market has repriced geopolitical risk as a structural condition, not a passing weather system.

Let me unpack that, because in the Gulf this is not an abstract c…