Brent crude held a narrow range just above $88 a barrel on Tuesday and U.S. equity futures hovered near last week’s record close, as a thinning corporate earnings calendar handed center stage to Wednesday’s April consumer-price report and a fresh International Energy Agency monthly demand forecast that traders expect to come in noticeably lower.

The global benchmark traded at $88.45 a barrel at 0730 GMT, up nine cents on the session and roughly $36 below its March 28 peak, with West Texas Intermediate at $84.55. The pair has now spent four straight sessions inside a $1.20 band, the tightest stretch of intraday volatility since before the Iran war, according to data compiled by ICE Futures Europe. Implied one-month Brent volatility has fallen to 24.5 percent from a wartime peak of 71 percent.

S&P 500 e-mini futures were flat at 0700 GMT after the cash index closed Monday at 5,712, a record high and 1.4 percent above its pre-war Feb. 28 close. Nasdaq-100 futures slipped 0.1 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished Monday at 41,290, also a fresh peak, with cyclicals leading after a quiet weekend on the geopolitical front.

“The tape is doing what tapes do when the news cycle goes flat — it grinds higher and waits for the next catalyst,” said Petra Lindqvist, head of energy research at Sundstrand Commodities in Stockholm. “For oil, that catalyst is the IEA report on Wednesday morning, and most of us are looking for a sizable downward revision to second-quarter demand. For equities, it is the CPI print a few hours later.”

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect headline consumer prices to have risen 0.2 percent in April from March, with the year-over-year rate easing to 3.0 percent from 3.4 percent in the prior month. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, is forecast to print at 3.4 percent year over year, down from 3.6 percent. A softer reading would be the clearest sign yet that the inflation pulse generated by the March oil shock has begun to wash out of the data, and would almost certainly pull forward market expectations for the first Federal Reserve rate cut.

Fed funds futures imply a 41 percent probability of a quarter-point cut at the July 29 meeting and roughly 78 percent odds of a cut by September, according to CME FedWatch. The two-year Treasury yield held at 3.78 percent in early New York hours, the 10-year at 4.04 percent.

“A 3.0 handle on headline takes the last of the war shock off the table,” said John Reilly, a senior macro analyst at Citi. “We do not think Chair Lindgren wants to validate a July move just yet, but the curve has the freedom to price one and another by year-end. That is what is keeping duration well bid and the dollar on the back foot.”

The dollar slipped fractionally on Tuesday, with the ICE Dollar Index at 101.7, a fresh three-month low. The euro firmed to $1.108 and sterling traded at $1.281 after last week’s Bank of England rate cut. The Japanese yen strengthened to 145.80 per dollar amid renewed speculation that the Bank of Japan could lift its policy rate at the June meeting; Governor Kazuo Ueda is scheduled to speak Friday in Yokohama.

The IEA’s monthly oil market report, due to be published in Paris on Wednesday at 0800 GMT, will be the first since the agency formally declared the April 15 Iran-Israel ceasefire a “structural shift” in its risk balance. Three analysts who briefed clients overnight said they expected the agency to trim its 2026 global oil demand forecast by between 350,000 and 500,000 barrels a day, citing softer Chinese refinery runs, the unwinding of strategic stockpile buying in Europe, and a smaller-than-expected rebound in Gulf bunker fuel demand. The agency’s previous report, released in mid-April, had nudged the demand outlook higher in anticipation of post-war restocking.

“We think the IEA has been too generous on the rebound story,” said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, in a note to clients. “Chinese apparent demand in April ran roughly 600,000 barrels a day below where consensus had it, and the European thermal complex is being squeezed by gas-to-oil switching reversing as LNG inventories normalize. A meaningful downgrade Wednesday would help validate the OPEC+ doves who want production unchanged at Vienna on June 1.”

OPEC+ ministers are scheduled to convene at the group’s Vienna secretariat on the first of next month, their first full gathering since the emergency April 1 session that added roughly 1.5 million barrels a day of production to cool the wartime spike. Several Gulf delegates have argued in recent days that the extra barrels should remain on the market through at least the third quarter; Russia and Kazakhstan, by contrast, have pushed quietly for a partial rollback, according to two people familiar with the consultations who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Shipping indicators continued to normalize. The Joint Maritime Information Center, established in Bahrain to coordinate post-ceasefire transit monitoring, reported that tanker movements through the Strait of Hormuz on a trailing seven-day basis ran at 99.6 percent of January averages, the strongest reading since the ceasefire took effect. London market war-risk insurance premiums on Gulf hulls fell to 0.24 percent of insured value, the lowest since the conflict began. Container spot rates on the Asia-Europe lane were quoted 2.4 percent lower week over week as carriers continued to redeploy capacity through the Bab el-Mandeb.

Corporate earnings traffic was lighter than last week’s peak. Home Depot Inc. was scheduled to report before the U.S. opening bell, with consensus calling for adjusted earnings of $3.69 per share on revenue of $39.4 billion; Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will report fiscal fourth-quarter results before the European open Wednesday. Saudi Aramco posted first-quarter net income on Monday of $26.1 billion, slightly above expectations, but warned that an extended period of softer Brent prices “would impact the pace of upstream capital deployment” through 2027.

European bourses opened mixed. The Stoxx Europe 600 was flat, the DAX off 0.1 percent and London’s FTSE 100 down 0.2 percent, dragged by BP and Shell as crude struggled to extend last week’s bounce. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 closed 0.6 percent higher on the weaker yen, the Hang Seng added 0.3 percent and the Shanghai Composite was little changed. Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul edged up 0.4 percent on the Aramco print.

In other commodities, gold held at $2,310 an ounce, copper added 0.5 percent on the London Metal Exchange to $4.24 a pound, and U.S. natural gas slipped to $2.71 per million British thermal units. Bitcoin traded at $72,800, marginally higher on the session.

“Compressed ranges do not last forever,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with Levant Macro Advisors. “The CPI print and the IEA revision are likely to set the next leg, and beyond that traders are watching the Vienna meeting and whether the Doha monitoring track produces an early sanctions adjustment. Until then, the path of least resistance is sideways with a downward drift in crude and an upward drift in equities.”

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the April CPI report would be released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, with the producer-price index to follow Thursday morning ahead of the open.