Elsewhere, war-related market panic seems at odds with consumer sentiment: File Image/Pixabay

Despite rumblings in the wake of U.S. president Donald Trump’s statement in the previous session that a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran was imminent, optimistic investors caused another round of price declines for oil on Friday – to the tune of 3.1 percent as of 1942 GMT.

This put Brent in the neighbourhood of $87.58 per barrel and deepened its weekly loss.

Also easing investor concerns was a survey from the University of Michigan suggesting that U.S. consumer sentiment was not as bad as economists feared: it reflected the relief many motorists felt in the wake of gasoline prices easing in June.

More good news on Friday was delivered by U.S. energy secretary Chris Wright, who told delegates at a Bloomberg Energy event in Houston  that the U.S. military was now helping move roughly 7 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil out of the Persian Gulf, roughly half the amount that remained stranded due to Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz – meaning that current exports were running at about one-third of normal levels, far higher than many analysts assumed.

Meanwhile, a senior executive from a major trading desk told media, "People are exhausted by this chaos, they want this to be over; you cannot trade futures without being constantly burned in an environment when the messaging changes every other hour."

The remarks were part of a Reuters story that posited investors have become “increasingly wary of committing cash to an asset that has become hostage to U.S. president Donald Trump's daily social media posts on the Iran war”; the story also noted that open interest in Brent has fallen by nearly 17 percent this year, the fastest rate since at least 2009, according to data.

Still, it seems Trump’s influence as well as that of Iran remains intense: market expectations on Friday were reportedly bolstered when Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in a social media post that a Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides has “never been closer.”

This prompted Haris Khurshid, the chief investment officer at Karobaar Capital, to remark, “It feels like the market is increasingly betting that both sides ultimately have more to lose from failure than compromise.

“That doesn’t mean a deal is close; it just means the market no longer sees breakdown as the most likely outcome.”

But true to form, oil on Friday later pared its losses after Trump wrote in a social media post that a draft deal leaked by Iranian media had “NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to,” and that Tehran contained “very dishonourable people to deal with.”