Brent Crude opened Monday 1 June at $93.91, up 3.06% from Friday's $91.12 close1. Brent is the global oil benchmark against which most of the world's crude is priced, and its level encodes how seriously traders rate the risk that the strait of Hormuz closes. Monday's move recovered part of last week's losses without breaking either way: no collapse toward $90, no deal-failure surge toward $110.
The price held above the $92.05 floor set on 29 May, the bottom of a sell-off that ranked as Brent's worst monthly fall since the Covid shock. Holding that floor tells you the market read the unsigned weekend as a delay, not a rupture, the same reading that pulled Brent below $100 in late May as diplomatic optimism built.
The signal worth reading sits in the shape of the curve, not the spot price. The 12-month forward near $105 still sits above spot, which means traders are paying more for oil a year out than for oil today. That inversion prices sub-$100 Brent as a temporary deal premium, the discount the market awards while a settlement looks likely, rather than a new structural level. If the talks collapse, the premium unwinds and spot chases the forward upward; for now the curve says the deal is late, not dead.
