Wall Street wrapped up April with its strongest monthly gain since November and Brent crude eased to a fresh post-ceasefire low Friday, capping a week that took the Iran war premium almost entirely out of global asset prices and shifted investor focus to a slower-than-expected start to the second quarter in China.

The S&P 500 closed Thursday at 5,684, up 1.6 percent for April and within 0.4 percent of its February record. The Nasdaq Composite finished the month up 2.3 percent, helped by a constructive reaction to first-quarter results from Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia earlier in the week. Brent crude for June delivery settled in London Thursday at $93.20 a barrel, down $1.40 on the week and roughly 26 percent below the $125 peak reached during the worst stretch of the conflict.

With European markets shut Friday for May Day, trading was concentrated in Asia, where the MSCI Asia Pacific index slipped 0.4 percent in choppy holiday-thinned conditions. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6 percent, the Hang Seng dropped 0.9 percent, and mainland Chinese markets were closed for the Labour Day break that runs through Tuesday. S&P 500 e-mini futures were 0.1 percent lower at 0700 GMT, and the dollar index edged up to 102.4 after a fourth consecutive weekly decline.

The proximate cause of Friday’s caution was the April reading from China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index, released by the National Bureau of Statistics overnight. The headline figure came in at 49.6, slipping below the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction and well under the 50.3 consensus expected by economists polled by Reuters. New export orders fell to 47.1, the lowest reading since last summer.

“This is not a number that changes the regime, but it complicates the China reopening story that a lot of desks were rebuilding after the ceasefire,” said Hanae Sato, head of commodities strategy at MUFG in Tokyo. “If Chinese refiners run below 14.6 million barrels a day in May, and we think they will, you can pencil in another two dollars of downside on Brent before the OPEC+ meeting.”

Saudi and Emirati delegates to OPEC+ have been publicly noncommittal about whether the group will revisit the April 1 production hike when ministers gather June 4 in Vienna. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, speaking Wednesday at an industry conference in Dhahran, said the cartel would act “with patience and with data” and pushed back on what he called “premature speculation” about a near-term rollback. Russia, which has tilted toward defending higher prices in recent months, has been quieter, with officials citing the ongoing reconstruction discussions in Iran as a reason to hold the line.

The week’s earnings reports did most of the heavy lifting on the equity side. Microsoft delivered a roughly in-line quarter Tuesday but raised its full-year capital spending guidance by $14 billion, citing accelerating demand for AI infrastructure. Apple beat on both lines Wednesday, with services revenue setting a fresh record, though management trimmed its June-quarter outlook by about 2 percent to reflect lingering supply disruptions out of the Gulf. Nvidia reported Thursday after the close; data center revenue rose 73 percent year over year to $34.2 billion, ahead of consensus, and the company guided current-quarter sales above the Street.

Even so, the megacap response on Friday was muted. “What the market wanted was a clean confirmation that the AI capex cycle is intact, and that is broadly what we got, but every one of these prints carried a caveat,” said John Reilly, a senior equity strategist at Citi. “Microsoft flagged energy constraints. Apple flagged geopolitics. Nvidia flagged customer concentration. None of that is fatal, but it makes the next leg of the rally harder to underwrite at 22 times forward.”

FactSet’s blended estimate for first-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth ticked up to 7.4 percent year over year by Friday from 6.9 percent a week earlier, with roughly 58 percent of index members having reported. Energy, defense and select financials have led upside surprises; consumer discretionary names exposed to Gulf travel and shipping have lagged.

Treasury markets gave back a portion of the week’s earlier gains. The 10-year yield rose four basis points Thursday to close at 4.21 percent, while the 2-year yield finished at 3.97 percent. Fed funds futures continued to imply roughly a 60 percent probability of a quarter-point cut at the June 17 meeting. Wednesday’s release of the first-quarter U.S. gross domestic product report showed annualized growth of 1.3 percent, modestly below consensus, with personal consumption holding up better than the headline figure implied. The March core personal consumption expenditures price index, due in Friday’s session, was expected at 2.7 percent year over year.

Currency moves through the week were dominated by a softer dollar. The euro climbed to $1.098 on Thursday before easing back to $1.094 in Asian trade Friday. Sterling held at $1.275 ahead of next Thursday’s Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting, at which most economists expect rates to be left unchanged. The yen rallied to 147.20, its strongest level since February, on follow-through from hawkish Bank of Japan commentary earlier in the week.

In commodities outside crude, gold extended a six-week decline to settle at $2,332 an ounce, more than $175 below the April 2 panic high. Copper finished the month with a 3.1 percent gain, supported by hopes that Chinese stimulus would follow the weak PMI print. U.S. natural gas held near $2.85 per million British thermal units as cooler-than-normal late-April temperatures crimped demand.

Insurance and shipping indicators continued to normalize. The Joint Maritime Information Center reported tanker volumes through the Strait of Hormuz at 97 percent of January averages for the trailing seven days, the highest reading since the conflict began. London market war-risk premiums on hulls transiting the Gulf fell to 0.30 percent of insured value, down from a peak of 0.80 percent in early April, after the syndicate review that closed Thursday.

Looking ahead, the calendar through May 8 features a Bank of England decision, the U.S. April employment report due May 1 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and a fresh slate of European and Chinese inflation prints. April nonfarm payrolls were expected to come in at 168,000, with the unemployment rate steady at 3.9 percent. Federal Reserve officials, who entered a blackout period Saturday ahead of the next policy meeting, were not scheduled to make further public remarks.

“The risk now is complacency, not catastrophe,” said Layla Hassan, a senior portfolio manager at Brevan Howard in London. “Volatility has compressed across every asset class, the ceasefire is holding, earnings are decent. That is a fine environment to own equities and a difficult one to make new high-conviction bets in. We are watching China and the OPEC+ meeting and not much else.”

Major bank strategists were expected to publish revised second-quarter outlooks over the weekend, with several desks signaling further downgrades to Brent forecasts and modest upgrades to U.S. earnings estimates. Officials at the International Energy Agency said the next monthly oil market report would land May 14.