Iran Market Pulse: Tuesday Midday, July 28, 2026; TEDPIX Passes 5.1 Million With 85% of the Day's Gain Booked at the Open

The Tehran Stock Exchange is having a good day, but if you look only at the closing number you miss half the story. As of 11:08 on Tuesday, 6 Mordad 1405 (28 July 2026), the main index stands at 5,101,790 points, up 49,722 points (0.98%), having crossed the 5,100,000 mark. Here is the catch: the market opened at 09:05 at 5,094,120 points, meaning 42,051 points of today's gain were recorded before a single share changed hands. In the two hours of trading since, only another 7,670 points have been added. In plain terms, close to 85% of today's advance happened in the first minute, and the session has been comparatively flat ever since.

Today's snapshot

Today's headlines

• The Iran Currency and Gold Exchange Center holds its gold bar auction today, Tuesday 6 Mordad, from 14:00 to 17:00; the margin deposit is 5 billion tomans per bar and each buyer is capped at 25 bars per week (Eghtesad Online and Fararu, 27 July).
• According to IRIB News, 476 kilograms of gold bars have been traded at the Exchange Center's auctions since the start of the Iranian year.
• The Federal Reserve's two-day meeting concludes tomorrow, Wednesday 29 July; surveyed economists broadly expect rates to hold at 3.5% to 3.75%, a fifth consecutive pause, though the CME FedWatch tool still assigns roughly a 25% probability to a hike.
• Spot gold fell today under pressure from a firm dollar sitting near a one-month high, trading around $4,045 ahead of the Fed decision (CNBC and Investing.com, 28 July).
• Brent crude is in its third consecutive losing session, retreating to the $86 area as concern over supply disruption eased (Trading Economics, 28 July).
• Oman's foreign minister held calls with counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt as part of regional de-escalation efforts (CNN, 27 July).
• The Iran Energy Exchange offered a total of 102,136 tonnes of hydrocarbon products across its domestic and international rings on Monday 5 Mordad (Ta'adol newspaper).

Stocks: a rally decided before the opening bell

Today's session is best read from three angles. The first is the shape of the gain. The market began with an opening jump to 5,094,120 points (0.83% above yesterday's close), dipped to an intraday low of 5,090,342 at 09:20, and then crept up to 5,101,790. That pattern means demand was concentrated mostly in pre-open orders, and that intra-session buying, while positive, has been mild.

The second angle is the breadth of the gain, and here the news improves. The equal-weight index has risen 16,577 points to 1,424,945, a gain of 1.18%, ahead of the main index's 0.98%. When the equal-weight index outpaces the main index, it means the rally is not concentrated in a handful of large caps and that small and mid-size names are participating. The Farabourse index, up 1.35% at 40,748 points, supports the same reading. By 11:08 the total value of trades stood at roughly 18.7 trillion tomans across 440,599 transactions.

The third angle is where this number sits in the bigger picture, and it deserves to be said plainly: passing 5,100,000 points is not a record. The index reached 5,331,617 points on 17 Tir (8 July) this year, which leaves today's market still 4.31% below the July peak. What has actually happened is a recovery: from its 28 Tir (19 July) low of 4,755,500 points the index has climbed 7.28%, and today marks a fourth consecutive rising session (3, 4, 5 and 6 Mordad). The index also sits above its 20-day moving average of 5,011,950 points; that is a statistical observation only, not a buy or sell signal. The live index board is available on the TEDPIX price page.

Currency: the two-rate gap at 23.6%

In the currency market, the only rate updated today is the official one. The Exchange Center's USD remittance rate rose 310 tomans this morning (08:17) to 152,097 tomans, with the buy rate at 150,728 tomans (09:16), a mild 0.2% increase. The last recorded free-market dollar print still dates from yesterday's close: 187,985 tomans. On that basis the gap between the two rates is about 35,889 tomans, putting the free market close to 23.6% above the official rate. This spread has held in the same range for several days without meaningful change. Live rates update on the currency price page.

Gold and coin: a pause after yesterday's jump

After yesterday's turbulent session, in which the Emami coin premium expanded by 32.73%, the gold board is effectively standing still today. The 18-carat trading gold sell rate was 19,762,100 tomans at 10:59, a negligible 0.03% lower, while the gold fund rose 0.22%. What matters is that this stability comes on a day when spot gold fell: the ounce is down $27.53 (0.68%) at $4,050.92, with global financial media attributing the decline to dollar strength near a one-month high ahead of tomorrow's Fed decision.

Why did domestic gold not follow the ounce lower? Because the price of gold in Iran is the product of the global ounce and the dollar rate, and today the dollar rate did not fall, it edged slightly higher. The two forces cancelled each other out. Today's real test comes at 14:00: the Exchange Center's gold bar auction, precisely the instrument designed to shrink the premium. The gold board is tracked on the gold price page.

Crypto: today's loser

Bitcoin is trading at $63,563, down $1,420 (2.23%), the steepest decline among the markets tracked here today. There is, however, an intraday detail the morning report could not show: at 07:59 Bitcoin was at $63,304, down 2.65%, meaning it has clawed back roughly $259 over the course of the morning. The dominant pressure remains tomorrow's Fed decision; for assets with no running yield, a higher-for-longer rate path raises the cost of holding them directly.

Iron and steel: a uniform 1,090-toman cut

Unlike yesterday's calm, the steel board has moved today, and the direction is down. Arian Foulad A3 10mm rebar, ex-works, was quoted at 69,550 tomans per kilogram on the 6 Mordad board, against 70,640 tomans yesterday, a fall of 1,090 tomans or 1.54%. That same 1,090-toman reduction repeats exactly in 12mm rebar (from 69,360 to 68,270 tomans) and 14mm rebar (from 69,270 to 68,180 tomans). The uniformity of that figure across all three sizes indicates a producer-level price adjustment rather than scattered market noise. Oil's retreat and the relative calming of currency expectations both push in the same direction.

Cars

The vehicle market has not transmitted fresh quotes so far today and remains in the corrective phase described in the morning report: a tug of war between inflationary expectations and severely depressed transaction volumes. Today's event for this market is Iran Khodro's offering of 600 Arisan 2 pickups on the Iran Mercantile Exchange; the level of demand will be the week's first reliable gauge.

Building materials

The cement board is unchanged today. Tehran Cement's bulk Portland type 2 is recorded at 4,014,000 tomans per tonne and the same producer's 50-kilogram bag at 218,000 tomans, exactly yesterday's figures. In a market whose principal driver is the energy imbalance, a day without change is not bad news.

Regional and global backdrop

Today's central thread is oil. Brent is down $1.01 (1.16%) at $86.66 and is in its third consecutive losing session, driven by easing concern over regional supply disruption. Two figures complete the picture: on one hand, despite this week's decline Brent remains up nearly 25% over the current calendar month, because the supply disruption had spread from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea; on the other, fewer than 10 commodity ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the past weekend, against roughly 100 vessels a day before the war. The channel to Tehran is direct: every dollar off Brent both reduces foreign-currency income and eases domestic energy-cost pressure and inflationary expectations, and today the second effect showed up on the steel board.

Alongside this, Oman's foreign minister held calls with counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt to pursue de-escalation, while Iran's foreign ministry has stated that no negotiations with the United States are currently under way. The oil market has responded to diplomatic signals, not to any announced agreement. In the neighbourhood, the dollar-lira rate was recorded at 47.38 (28 July, 10:53) and was essentially unchanged, meaning the cost of Turkish goods in Iran's border trade is flat today. The dollar-yuan rate stood at 6.7722 (27 July, 21:34), a neutral signal for imports from China. Euro-dollar was effectively unchanged at 1.137 (28 July, 10:58).

The takeaway

Today's verdict is clear: stocks won, and they won it in the first minute. Of the index's 49,722-point gain, 42,051 points were booked in the opening auction before trading began, and the two hours of trading that followed added only 7,670 points. Why does that matter? Because a gain concentrated at the open reflects a decision taken the night before, not a product of sustained buying through the session. The good news lies in the breadth: the equal-weight index's outperformance shows that smaller names are sharing in this advance. Remember one thing: passing 5,100,000 points is not a new ceiling. The market is still 4.31% short of its 17 Tir peak, and what we are watching is a recovery, not a summit.

What to watch today

• The Exchange Center's gold bar auction, 14:00 to 17:00. Volume offered and prices discovered are today's main gauge for the coin premium.
• The closing hour of the bourse, to 12:30. The question is whether the index holds the 5,100,000 level to the bell and whether the equal-weight outperformance lasts.
• The offering of 600 Arisan 2 pickups on the Mercantile Exchange as a thermometer of vehicle demand.
• The Federal Reserve's rate decision tomorrow, Wednesday 29 July, which bears directly on spot gold, Bitcoin and the dollar index.
• Whether oil's slide continues. If Brent posts a fourth down session, watch the effect on the steel board and on currency expectations.

Dated events are tracked in the Sahmino market calendar.

All figures in this report carry their own reference date and time and are in Tehran local time. Stock market figures relate to a session in progress and will change by the close. The separation of "what happened" from "why" is deliberate: analytical passages are interpretations of published data and are not buy or sell recommendations.