The Treasury moved gold. The war moved oil.

Gold jumped sharply Wednesday, and the war had nothing to do with it. The US Treasury announced it would at least double the size of the operations in which it buys back its own 10-year to 30-year debt. Long yields fell hard on the news, the dollar dropped to a three-month low, and COMEX gold futures settled 2.8 percent higher at $4,545.30, while spot gold rose about 4 percent intraday. One announcement out of Washington repriced long bonds, the currency, and the metals complex inside a single session.

The war moved the other market. The United Arab Emirates suspended all trade and financial dealings with Iran until further notice, after saying its defenses detected two ballistic missiles fired toward its territory. Both came down in the Persian Gulf, and Tehran denies aiming at the UAE at all. A Gulf state that had stayed economically engaged through this entire conflict has now cut ties. Brent, already rising for a fourth session, pushed above $94 in early trading this morning. The waterway behind all of this remains deadly: a strike on a Greek-owned bulk carrier leaving the Strait of Hormuz on Monday killed the ship's chief engineer.

The tempting read is that Wednesday proved capital is running to hard assets. We are declining that read. Yields, the dollar, and gold all moved on the same announcement; that is one event with three legs rather than three independent pieces of evidence. Whether the gold move outlasts the dollar move is the question the rest of this week gets to answer, and below the wall we set out, in advance, exactly what would make us change our minds.

For paying subscribers below: why Wednesday's gold rally does not strengthen the hard-asset thesis; the follow-through test that would classify the move as temporary dollar-and-rates repricing; why oil's demand test remains at zero; and what the yen's first real move in five sessions does and does not say about Japanese capital coming home.