Brent crude broke below $100 a barrel in early New York trading Thursday for the first time since the Iran war began, as a downbeat earnings preview from Delta Air Lines collided with fresh signs that mediators in Islamabad were narrowing the text of a phased ceasefire, leaving traders to reconcile a softer growth picture with a war premium that has steadily drained out of the curve.

The June Brent contract last changed hands at $99.65 a barrel, down $2.40 on the day and roughly $25 off its late-March peak. West Texas Intermediate fell $2.15 to $95.20. Both benchmarks have now retraced more than 60 percent of the war-driven spike that began in early March, a slide accelerated by last week’s OPEC+ decision to add about 1.5 million barrels per day of additional supply and by a string of Islamabad headlines suggesting that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s offer of a “conditional cessation” was being translated into draft language acceptable to U.S. and Israeli negotiators.

“The triple-digit level was a psychological holdout, not a fundamental one,” said Maren Loftus, head of oil research at Helvetia Commodities in Geneva. “Once it gave, the next stop is the low nineties and probably a fight there. Physical balances have softened faster than anyone modeled in March, and the war story is no longer doing the heavy lifting it was two weeks ago.”

The opening tone in equities was mixed, with energy and airlines sending opposing signals. The S&P 500 was off 0.2 percent at midmorning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 percent on defensive rotation, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.5 percent as semiconductor names pared early gains. Energy was the worst-performing sector, down 1.7 percent, while transports rallied 1.4 percent. Delta shares fell 4.6 percent in pre-market trading after the carrier cut its second-quarter unit-revenue guidance, citing “structurally elevated jet-fuel costs that have not yet adjusted to spot crude” and the cancellation of premium Gulf and South Asia routings that historically carry the carrier’s richest margins.

“Delta is the canary, not the coalmine,” said John Reilly, a senior analyst at Citi. “Their hedge book is industry-typical and their network is more exposed to Atlantic-Gulf premium traffic than any peer. If they are guiding down, United and American are guiding down, and the question becomes how quickly fuel costs flow through versus how quickly demand recovers as the airspace reopens.”

The bank-earnings curtain-raiser added a second layer of caution. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are due to report first-quarter results Friday morning, with consensus calling for a 2.1 percent year-over-year decline in S&P 500 financials earnings, according to FactSet. Loan-loss provisioning is widely expected to rise as banks mark to a war-shaped second quarter, and investment-banking revenue is forecast to fall sharply on a thin slate of completed mergers in March. The KBW Bank Index opened down 0.6 percent.

The Treasury curve flattened. The two-year yield slipped two basis points to 4.18 percent, while the 10-year held at 3.92 percent. Federal funds futures shifted to imply a roughly 58 percent probability of a quarter-point rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s June meeting, up from 50 percent on Tuesday, as traders read Delta’s guidance and a softer Atlanta Fed GDPNow print as confirmation that the demand side of the war shock was beginning to register in real data. The dollar index slipped 0.3 percent to 104.1, with the largest move against the Swiss franc, which gave back another quarter percent of its haven bid.

In Islamabad, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told reporters Wednesday evening that mediators had circulated a “third revision” of the framework principles drafted last weekend and that “we are now arguing about commas, not chapters.” A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington considered the draft “workable in its current shape, with two outstanding issues,” and declined to identify them. Iranian state television broadcast a brief statement from Araghchi describing the latest text as “a basis on which serious discussion can proceed.” Egyptian and Saudi envoys met separately Thursday morning with Iranian and U.S. counterparts before a planned full plenary at the Pakistani foreign ministry.

The diplomatic momentum has not extinguished the kinetic risk. Overnight, U.S. Central Command reported that two Houthi-launched anti-ship cruise missiles were intercepted by the destroyer USS Carney in the southern Red Sea, and Israeli aircraft struck a Revolutionary Guard logistics site near Bandar Abbas. Tehran said one civilian was killed in the strike; CENTCOM said it had no evidence of damage to nearby commercial port facilities. War-risk insurance premiums for Strait of Hormuz transits eased to 0.82 percent of hull value, the lowest reading since the war began but still roughly eight times pre-war levels.

European bourses traded modestly lower in the cash session. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.3 percent, with airlines and chemicals among the few gainers; Lufthansa rose 2.1 percent and BASF added 0.9 percent. Germany’s DAX fell 0.4 percent, France’s CAC 40 lost 0.5 percent and the FTSE 100 dropped 0.8 percent on weakness in BP and Shell, which fell 3.6 and 3.2 percent respectively as crude broke through the century mark. The Stoxx Europe energy sub-index has now given back nearly all its war-driven gains.

In Asia, the Nikkei closed up 0.4 percent on yen weakness, the Hang Seng added 0.7 percent and South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.1 percent, led by SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics on continued semiconductor strength. The Shanghai Composite was flat. India’s Nifty 50 added 0.6 percent, with Indian Oil Corp. up 2.4 percent after the company told analysts Wednesday that April loadings were tracking closer to $98 a barrel than the $114 it paid in March.

European natural gas extended its slide. The Dutch TTF front month traded at 39 euros per megawatt-hour, down a further 4 percent and the lowest close since late February. Norwegian flows remained at full capacity and German storage stood at 36 percent, slightly above the five-year seasonal average. Two LNG cargoes originally booked for diversion to Europe have now been redirected to Asian buyers paying higher spot premiums.

Gold fell $24 to $2,352 an ounce, silver dropped 1.6 percent and Bitcoin slipped 1.2 percent to $69,800 as risk-haven flows reversed. The Cboe Volatility Index opened at 21.4, the lowest reading since early March, before drifting to 22.0 by midmorning.

Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the consultancy Levant Strategic Insight, said the more important variable for markets over the next 10 days was not the headline ceasefire date but the language of any verification annex. “Crude has already priced a halt to strikes,” Hassan said. “What it has not priced is whether the structure that emerges from Islamabad is durable enough to keep premiums compressed through the summer driving season. That is the next leg of the trade.”

OPEC+ technical officials are scheduled to hold their review call on April 22. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told reporters in Riyadh on Wednesday that the group was “satisfied with the trajectory” of the market and would assess additional adjustments “if and when conditions require.” Reilly said a credible ceasefire announcement in the coming days would likely push Brent into the high eighties by early May, while a collapse of the Islamabad track would send it back through $110 “in a single session.”