Brent crude held near $108 a barrel in early New York trading Tuesday as fresh signals out of the Islamabad mediation track competed with caution ahead of the first wave of U.S. bank earnings, leaving the front month inside a tight range that brokers said reflected exhaustion rather than conviction after three weeks of violent two-way swings.

The June Brent contract was last quoted at $107.85, down 35 cents on the day, after trading as high as $109.20 in Asian hours on a Reuters report — citing Pakistani and Egyptian officials — that the parties at Islamabad were circulating a draft set of “framework principles” addressing a phased halt to strikes and a verification mechanism for Iran’s enrichment program. West Texas Intermediate slipped 28 cents to $102.40. Both benchmarks have shed roughly $17 from their late-March peaks but remain about 24 percent above where they started February.

“The market is doing a lot of work to figure out whether this is the headline that finally sticks or another false dawn,” said Maren Loftus, head of oil research at Helvetia Commodities in Geneva. “Physical is still soft, OPEC barrels are arriving, and yet nobody wants to lean too hard short until we see whether the Iranians actually sign something. The result is $108 with a lot of churn underneath.”

Equity index futures opened mixed and stayed that way through the cash session’s first hour. The S&P 500 was up 0.18 percent shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.1 percent and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.4 percent on continued strength in semiconductors and large-cap software. European bourses closed broadly higher: the Stoxx Europe 600 added 0.7 percent, Germany’s DAX rose 0.9 percent and London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.3 percent, with the index’s heavy energy weighting offsetting gains elsewhere.

Most of the day’s macro attention sat on the calendar two days out, when JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup report first-quarter results before the open Wednesday. Analyst expectations have been trimmed steadily since the Iran war began, with consensus first-quarter earnings for the S&P 500 financials sector now down 2.1 percent year over year, according to FactSet, compared with the 4.4 percent gain analysts pencilled in at the start of March. Investment-banking pipelines are widely expected to show the largest hit, with deal announcements down sharply in the back half of the quarter.

“The numbers themselves will probably be okay. The question is the tone on the calls about deal activity in the second quarter and about loan-loss reserves,” said John Reilly, a bank analyst at Citi. “If a CEO sounds optimistic that the war ends in weeks, the multiples on this group expand 8, 10 percent on the spot. If anyone sounds like they’re bracing for another quarter of this, financials get sold.”

The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield traded at 3.93 percent, little changed on the day. Federal funds futures continued to price a roughly even-odds chance of a quarter-point rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s June meeting after Friday’s softer-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report. The dollar index slipped 0.2 percent against a basket of peers, with the largest moves against the Norwegian krone — which gained 0.6 percent as Brent stabilized — and the yen, which rose 0.3 percent on the back of position adjustment ahead of a Bank of Japan policy meeting later in the month.

Shipping and insurance markets continued their slow normalization. War-risk premiums for transits of the Strait of Hormuz were quoted between 1.45 percent and 1.55 percent of hull value Tuesday, according to two London-based marine underwriters, down from a late-March peak above 2.2 percent. The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index extended Friday’s decline with a 1.1 percent drop. Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie said Monday that daily transits had recovered to 82 percent of pre-war volumes, the highest reading since the conflict began, and that “scheduling visibility into May has improved meaningfully.”

Asian energy buyers reinforced the supply-side argument. South Korea’s SK Innovation said Tuesday that May-loading term cargoes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been confirmed at “near contractual” volumes, and India’s state-owned Indian Oil Corp. said its average crude-acquisition cost in March was $114 a barrel but that April loadings were tracking closer to $103. Beijing’s National Development and Reform Commission released a brief statement urging “restraint in speculative inventory accumulation,” language analysts read as a signal that strategic stockpiling had largely paused after a March buying surge.

European natural gas, which has remained the war’s most stubbornly elevated commodity, traded modestly lower. The benchmark Dutch TTF front month was last at 48.20 euros per megawatt-hour, down 2.4 percent on the day, after reports that two LNG cargoes originally booked for diversion would now proceed on their original Asian routings. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters in Berlin that emergency storage drawdowns had stabilized and that “the working assumption for the remainder of the heating season is that no further coordinated intervention is required.”

Gold eased a further 0.8 percent to $2,378 an ounce, its lowest close in nearly three weeks. Silver fell 1.1 percent and copper added 0.4 percent to $4.48 a pound on the Comex. The Cboe Volatility Index opened at 22.6, the lowest reading since the war began, before edging back to 23.1 by midmorning. Bitcoin recovered above $71,000 after a weekend slump, with traders attributing the rebound to a softer dollar and renewed retail flows.

Beyond the banks, the earnings calendar this week is light but symbolically heavy. Delta Air Lines reports Thursday, offering a first look at how the war’s aviation disruptions and elevated jet-fuel prices fed through to a major U.S. carrier; Constellation Brands and PepsiCo round out the consumer-staples docket. Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the consultancy Levant Strategic Insight, said the bigger market-moving catalyst this week likely sits outside any earnings release. “If the Islamabad joint statement lands by the weekend, you get a $5 down move in Brent in a hurry and a fairly violent rotation in equities,” Hassan said. “If it slips into next week, the tape keeps grinding.”

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both reiterated second-quarter Brent forecasts in the $102 to $106 range overnight, with both banks flagging the “asymmetric” risk that a credible ceasefire announcement could push prices below their year-end targets within a single session. ICE Brent options pricing implied a roughly $4.60 move in either direction by Friday’s settlement.

Markets close Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr is scheduled to speak in New York at 1 p.m., and the Treasury will auction $58 billion in three-year notes at 1 p.m. Eastern. Traders said positioning into the bank prints Wednesday morning would be cautious. “Nobody wants to add risk in size before JPM,” Reilly said. “Not with this tape.”