Laura Besarati

And markets are bracing for a US-Iran deal.

Maybe, maybe not.

I'm Laura Bessarachi.

Well, Stevie, it looks like we're currently hovering around our best level of the day, roughly up by 0.4%.

So a very small move higher, but still a second straight day of improvements.

And it does look like over the course of the week, we've just snuck into positive territory.

That's certainly correct.

And if you zoom out a little bit further to see how we're doing over the course of the year so far, I know we've had quite a lot of volatility going on in recent months since the conflict began, but over the year so far, down 0.6%.

So it could definitely be worse considering the circumstances.

We did have quite a strong start to the year, which has somewhat offset some of the declines that we've seen in recent months.

The other thing markets have been focusing on, of course, is what's going on with the US-Iran conflict.

So we did see US markets push higher, not by much overnight.

The Dow was up by 0.6%, the S&P 500 edging higher by a fifth of 1%, and the

tech-heavy Nasdaq up by a tenth of 1%.

But there was some optimism or potentially speculation and reports that the US and Iran are getting close to an agreement as the war approaches the three-month mark.

So that did send oil prices lower overnight, the third straight day of declines on the

Investors grew increasingly sceptical, which sent oil prices back up in today's session.

So they're a bit uncertain about the possibility of a breakthrough in talks between the two countries, considering both sides are still very divided over Iran's uranium stockpile and also the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

So Iran has been reporting that it's working with

Oman on a framework for a permanent toll system that would formalise its control over maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.