Brent crude slipped below $99 a barrel in early London trade Friday, extending a six-session decline that has now retraced more than 20% of the wartime spike, as traders increasingly priced the Iran-Israel ceasefire as durable and shifted focus to a heavy week of corporate earnings.

The global benchmark settled at $98.74 at the New York close, down 1.3% on the day and off roughly $26 from its April 1 peak. West Texas Intermediate followed, ending at $94.10. The drop coincided with a U.S. Energy Information Administration report showing commercial crude stocks rose by 4.8 million barrels last week, well above consensus, and with Saudi Aramco confirming that May loadings to Asian customers would track the higher OPEC+ ceiling agreed in Vienna three weeks ago.

“The geopolitical risk premium is leaking out of this market in real time,” said John Reilly, an oil and gas analyst at Citi. “We had something like $18 to $22 of war-premium baked in at the peak. Most of that is gone. What’s left is a normal oversupply story with OPEC+ adding barrels into a softening macro.”

Equities, by contrast, climbed for a fourth straight session. The S&P 500 added 0.7% to 5,612, leaving it within 1.2% of the Feb. 24 closing high registered before Iranian missiles first reached Tel Aviv. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1%, paced by software and semiconductor names, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 184 points to 41,309. The VIX, which traded above 32 during the second week of April, closed at 16.4, its lowest reading in nine weeks.

Bond markets reinforced the risk-on tone. The 10-year Treasury yield fell three basis points to 4.18%, retracing the entire wartime spike, and the dollar index slipped 0.4% as flight-to-safety bids unwound. Gold, which briefly traded above $2,950 an ounce on April 13, fetched $2,742 in late dealings, while bitcoin pushed back above $94,000.

Driving the broader market is a first-quarter earnings season that, despite the wartime disruption, is shaping up better than feared. With about 38% of the S&P 500 having reported, blended earnings growth is tracking 8.9%, according to LSEG data compiled Thursday evening, against an April 1 estimate of 5.7%. Roughly 79% of reporters have beaten consensus.

Microsoft anchored the week’s tech bloc, reporting Azure growth of 31% year-over-year and lifting its capital expenditure guidance for fiscal 2027 to a range of $96 billion to $102 billion, signaling that the failure of the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez AI moratorium in the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday had cleared the runway for continued data-center buildout. Shares closed up 4.2% on the week. Alphabet rose 3.8% after Google Cloud margins expanded 410 basis points. Apple, which reports next Thursday, gained 2.1%, though analysts warned its China and India guidance could be choppy given lingering shipping disruptions in the western Indian Ocean.

“Investors have shaken off two distinct anxieties this month,” said Priya Venkataraman, chief equity strategist at BNY Mellon Wealth. “The first was the war itself. The second was a regulatory tail risk on AI capex. Both resolved benignly within ten days. That’s a lot of overhang to clear.”

Banks have been a mixed picture. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup beat on trading revenue, helped by elevated FX and rates volatility during the conflict, but loan-loss provisions ticked up at regional lenders with exposure to small-cap energy and aviation borrowers. KBW’s regional bank index is still 6.4% below its pre-war level.

In commodities beyond oil, European TTF natural gas eased to 38 euros per megawatt-hour as Qatari LNG shipments through the now lightly-monitored Strait of Hormuz returned to near-normal cadence. Shipping insurers, however, are not yet rolling back the war-risk premiums imposed in March; Lloyd’s of London market sources told reporters that any reduction would likely follow a 60-day clean observation window from the U.N. monitoring mission. That continues to add roughly $480,000 per voyage to a typical VLCC transit, costs ultimately borne by refiners and consumers.

Asia closed mixed earlier in the session. The Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% to 38,860, supported by yen weakness, while the Hang Seng dipped 0.3% on profit-taking in Chinese tech. India’s Nifty 50 hit a record close as foreign portfolio inflows resumed for a fifth straight session.

Currency strategists flagged the rupee, Egyptian pound and Turkish lira as recovery beneficiaries, all firming 1.5% to 3.2% against the dollar this week as tourism bookings and remittance flows began to normalize.

Looking ahead, traders pointed to next Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting as the most likely catalyst for the next directional move. Fed funds futures now price a 64% probability of a quarter-point cut, up from 31% a week ago, as Chair Jerome Powell and colleagues weigh whether the inflationary impulse from oil’s spike has fully dissipated. Friday’s University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading, which rebounded to 71.8 from a 12-month low of 58.3 in early April, suggested households are already moving on.

“The market wants the Fed to ratify what it’s already decided,” said Karen Holzmann, head of U.S. rates strategy at Deutsche Bank. “Whether Powell obliges is the only question that matters for the rest of April.”

Companies including Amazon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Caterpillar and Visa are scheduled to report next week, alongside the Bank of Japan’s first policy decision since the ceasefire. Treasury is also set to auction $69 billion in two-year notes on Monday, the first test of foreign demand since yields fully retraced their wartime move.