Australian motorists are lined up for two petrol price rises at once. Brent crude finished the week at US$88.10 a barrel, up 4.6 per cent on Friday and about 14 per cent across five sessions of the widening US-Iran war, and the remaining half of the fuel excise discount comes off on 2 August.

The sequencing is what will sting. Wholesale price moves take one to two weeks to reach the bowser, which puts the war premium at the pump in late July, just as the excise change adds roughly another 16 cents a litre on top. The ACCC, which is monitoring retailer behaviour through the restoration, had the national capital-city average at 170.1 cents a litre in the week to 5 July, already up 12.2 cents on the week before and priced before the latest crude surge. "There's no doubt that markets have reacted," the NRMA's Peter Khoury said as the benchmarks climbed last week.

The same barrel that costs households is repricing the share market. The ASX 200 closed Friday at 8,796.7, down half a per cent on the day and 0.1 per cent for the week, but the average hides the split: energy rose 1.7 per cent, with Woodside up 3.3 per cent and Ampol 1.7 per cent, while materials fell 2.9 per cent as BHP lost another 2.7 per cent to $57.54 in the hangover from Thursday's soft operational review and copper guidance cut. Gold miners went with them, bullion sitting near its lowest since November despite a small Friday bounce, and the dollar ended just below 70 US cents.

The week's local test arrives Thursday at 11.30am, when the ABS publishes June labour force figures, which FNArena says will be "closely watched for clues on the state of the economy following the Budget and three cash rate hikes". Miners' June-quarter reports flow through the back half of July, and offshore the tone is set midweek when Tesla and Alphabet report and the US Federal Reserve sits silent in its pre-meeting blackout.

None of it matters as much as the fortnight after. The cash rate sits at 4.35 per cent after three hikes this cycle, the June-quarter inflation figures land on 29 July, and the Reserve Bank decides again on 11 August. Market pricing gives just over even odds of one more hike by early 2027 on Finder's tracker; Westpac still tips a 4.85 per cent peak while NAB, ANZ and CBA call 4.35 the top. An oil shock that keeps feeding through to transport and freight costs is the argument for the hawks, made at every service station in the country.

Futures reopen on Monday morning, Australian time, with the weekend's escalation in the Gulf still being priced. The number to watch is not on a trading screen: it is the ACCC's next weekly average, which will show how much of the crude surge has already landed before the excise does the rest.