Brent crude traded within a dollar of the psychologically charged $100 mark on Friday after Iranian and U.S. delegations in Islamabad filed written responses to the mediators’ “framework principles” overnight, sending traders into a fourth straight session of selling the war-risk premium even as a Houthi drone strike on a Liberia-flagged tanker in the Bab el-Mandeb cut into the day’s relief rally.

Brent for June delivery changed hands at $100.85 a barrel in late-morning London trading, down $2.30 on the day and roughly $24 below the late-March panic high of $125.30. West Texas Intermediate settled the European session at $96.40. The benchmark’s two-week slide reflected a confluence of forces: the 1.5-million-barrel daily output addition agreed at OPEC+’s emergency Vienna meeting on April 1, the steady accumulation of diplomatic signals out of Pakistan, and a strip that has now repriced the December 2026 contract down to $87.20.

“The market is doing what it always does — it is selling the war ahead of the ceasefire, then it will sell the ceasefire ahead of the recovery,” said Priya Nair, head of commodities research at Macquarie in Singapore. “The question is no longer whether Brent prints a nine-handle, it is whether it prints one before or after Islamabad delivers a joint statement.”

Equities extended a third session of gains. The S&P 500 traded up 0.7% in pre-market, building on Thursday’s 1.2% advance and reducing the index’s drawdown since the war began to roughly 1.6%, within striking distance of the line economists at JPMorgan called the “war-erasure” level. The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.9%, with airlines, chemicals and Mediterranean tourism names leading. In Asia, the Nikkei closed up 1.1% and the Hang Seng added 1.6%, the latter helped by a softer dollar and a sharp rally in Chinese refiners and shipping names. South Korea’s Kospi outperformed at 1.8%, lifted by a semiconductor relief trade.

The written reactions exchanged in Islamabad overnight have not been released, and mediators continued to treat the text itself as a non-paper. But Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told reporters at the Foreign Office on Friday morning that the responses were “constructive in substance” and that the parties had agreed to convene a fourth substantive session over the weekend. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in remarks carried by state television, said Tehran had submitted “specific and serious” amendments, particularly on the sequencing of strikes against nuclear infrastructure and on the release of frozen funds.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe a fluid process, said Washington’s written reply preserved the architecture of the mediators’ draft but inserted language requiring verifiable steps by Iran on Houthi launches and on Iraqi militia activity before any U.S. commitment to a synchronized stand-down. “We are not at a yes, but we are no longer hearing the word no,” the official said.

Currency and rates markets reflected the same lengthening confidence. The dollar index slipped 0.4% to 104.2, gold eased $22 to $2,361 an ounce, and the Swiss franc gave back another portion of its haven gains. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield climbed seven basis points to 4.28% as Fed funds futures trimmed bets on a near-term emergency rate cut, now pricing a roughly 14% probability of a 25-basis-point move at the May 7 FOMC meeting, down from 31% a week ago.

The relief did not extend evenly to all corners of the energy complex. The drone strike on the MV Helios Star, a 158,000-deadweight-ton crude carrier transiting the Bab el-Mandeb under Liberian flag, set off a fire in two cargo tanks and forced the master to divert to Djibouti, according to a statement from the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which dispatched a destroyer to assist. The incident, claimed by the Houthi military spokesman in a televised statement, was the first successful strike on a laden tanker since the war began. War-risk insurance rates for hulls transiting the Strait of Hormuz held steady at roughly 0.85% of vessel value, but Bab el-Mandeb premia jumped to 1.4% from 1.05%.

“The Helios Star is exactly the kind of tail event the strip has been struggling to price,” said John Reilly, a senior energy analyst at Citi in New York. “What is striking is the muted reaction. A year ago, that headline would have added eight dollars to Brent. This morning it added one and then gave it back. Investors clearly believe the diplomatic floor is now higher than the kinetic ceiling.”

Shipping markets continued to recalibrate. The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index slipped another 3% on Friday, leaving it 28% above its February average but well off the wartime peak. Maersk said it would maintain Cape-of-Good-Hope routings through at least May 15 but had begun “internal scenario work” on a phased return to Red Sea transits should the framework be adopted. CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd issued similar statements.

European natural gas continued to soften. Dutch TTF month-ahead traded at 38.40 euros per megawatt-hour, down from 41 euros at the start of the week and well below the 65-euro spike in late March. EU storage stood at 39% of capacity, slightly above the five-year seasonal average. Energy ministers from Germany, France, Italy and Spain held a follow-on call Thursday evening and signaled that contingency demand-reduction measures drafted in March would be shelved, pending the outcome in Islamabad.

In tech, Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet drifted modestly higher in pre-market trading as House Ways and Means Committee members began circulating draft amendments to the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez AI moratorium bill, which the Senate passed Monday evening 52-48. “The capex cycle is still tracking through 2027, but the option value of a build pause has gone from negligible to genuinely binary,” said Layla Hassan, a strategist at TS Lombard in London. Utility bond proxies underperformed, with NextEra and Dominion both down 1.1% pre-market on concerns that data-center demand could be capped.

OPEC+’s next technical review call is scheduled for April 22, and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman reiterated Thursday that the group would “act decisively, in both directions” should conditions warrant. Reilly said the strip was now consistent with a 55% probability of a ceasefire announcement by month-end, up from 45% a week ago, with the residual mass distributed between a prolonged low-intensity conflict and a tail risk of a Hormuz closure. Nair said the risk remaining in the curve was, increasingly, “time, not war.”

Traders said the weekend session in Islamabad would be the most consequential market event of the month. Officials in Pakistan said additional details on the timing and composition of the next round would be announced after the parties had reviewed each other’s written responses.