Iran Market Pulse: Tuesday Morning, 28 July 2026; The Coin Premium Widened 32.7% in a Single Day

Everyone was watching the dollar yesterday. The free-market dollar ended Monday, 5 Mordad 1405 (27 July 2026) at 187,985 tomans (19:59 Tehran time), up 1,485 tomans or 0.8%. But the number that really jumped was somewhere else: the Emami coin premium widened 32.73% in a single day, rising 1,170,000 tomans to 4,745,000 tomans. What makes that remarkable is the timing. It happened on a night when spot gold did not rise at all; by this morning it had fallen 0.81% to $4,045.71 (6 Mordad, 07:59). The domestic market priced in something the global market did not.

Today's snapshot

Today's headlines

• Per Mehr News, TEDPIX gained about 50,000 points on Monday, 5 Mordad, with retail turnover of 29 trillion tomans, consolidating above the 5 million level as refinery stocks kept leading.
• The Exchange Center's gold bullion auction is held today, Tuesday 6 Mordad, from 14:00 to 17:00. The deadline for the 5 billion toman (50 billion rial) collateral deposit per bar was midnight Monday, and the purchase cap is 25 bars per applicant per week.
• Iran Khodro offers 600 Arisan 2 pickup trucks on the Iran Mercantile Exchange today, 6 Mordad (Mehr, 5 Mordad).
• The head of the Tax Affairs Organization reported 507 trillion tomans of tax revenue collected in the first four months of 1405, up 32% year on year (Mehr, 5 Mordad).
• At the Iran Currency and Gold Exchange Center on Monday, 5 Mordad, the dollar remittance sell rate rose 218 tomans to 151,787 tomans and the euro remittance rose 195 tomans to 172,599 tomans.
• Assets under management at exchange-listed investment funds reached 3,400 trillion tomans, with a record 606 licences issued (Mehr, 5 Mordad).

Gold and coin: when the coin outruns its own metal

The coin premium (habab) is simply the gap between the coin's market price and the value of the gold inside it, and that is exactly what makes yesterday unusual. The Emami coin rose 2.21%, but its intrinsic value, which is built from spot gold and the dollar rate, rose about 1.6%. The difference, those 1,170,000 tomans, went straight into the premium. Put plainly, the domestic buyer agreed yesterday to pay more for a coin than the gold in it was worth.

A comparison shows the scale. On Sunday, 4 Mordad, this same premium had collapsed to around 2.1 million tomans; it has now more than doubled in two sessions. It is still short of its recent peak, though: on 18 Tir this year the Emami coin premium stood at roughly 7,091,000 tomans. If you want to know exactly how the figure is calculated, our lesson "What is the coin premium and how is it calculated?" walks through the formula with a worked example.

The rest of the gold board was up too. A gram of 18-karat gold rose 1.85% to 18,209,300 tomans (Mehr News quoted 18,318,100 tomans that same morning), 24-karat gold reached 24,278,800 tomans, and cash melted gold rose 1.77% to 78,653,000 tomans. This morning shows a pause, however: tradable 18-karat gold was changing hands at 19,763,100 tomans at 07:59, essentially unchanged. The full board is on our gold price page.

Currency: the two-rate gap holds near 24%

The free-market dollar rose 0.8% while the Exchange Center remittance dollar rose only 0.14%, leaving the gap between the two rates at roughly 36,200 tomans, with the free market close to 24% above the official rate. That spread has held in this range for several days and is itself a signal that free-market demand has not been matched by official supply. Tether is the other point worth noting: it was quoted around 189,000 tomans on Monday, above the cash banknote dollar. That inversion, against last Saturday when tether sat about 2,900 tomans below the cash dollar, marks a meaningful turn in retail traders' expectations. Live rates update on our currency price page.

Stocks: a fourth green session and consolidation above 5 million

TEDPIX closed Monday up 49,738 points (0.99%) at 5,052,068, consolidating the 5 million channel it recovered last week. The over-the-counter IFX index rose 1.06% to 40,207 points. The simultaneous rise of the main and equal-weighted indices shows buying was not confined to the large caps: during the session 540 symbols traded positive against 320 negative. Per Mehr, retail turnover came in at 29 trillion tomans and the refinery group remained the market leader.

The driver is the one repeating for several days now: with the political backdrop relatively calmer and oil retreating from its recent highs, part of the money has rotated out of the parallel markets and into equities. We covered the previous session in Market Pulse, Monday midday, 5 Mordad.

Crypto: selling pressure ahead of the Fed decision

Crypto took the heaviest pressure of any global market overnight. Bitcoin fell 2.65% and was trading at $63,304 this morning (07:59), while Ethereum dropped 3.57% to $1,879.51. Specialist market outlets converge on two causes: the two-day Federal Reserve meeting on 28 and 29 July (6 and 7 Mordad), and outflows from bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Contrary to the prevailing expectation of earlier months, the US market this time is pricing the possibility of a rate hike rather than a cut, a scenario that weighs on non-yielding assets such as crypto and gold. That also explains why spot gold slid at the same time. Latest prices are on our bitcoin price page.

Iron and steel

The steel board was quiet on Monday, 5 Mordad. Arian Foulad A3 10 mm rebar priced at 70,640 tomans per kilogram ex-works, the same producer's 12 mm rebar at 69,360 tomans and 14 mm at 69,270 tomans. The long-run driver here is still the energy imbalance: per Mehr, the summer 1405 power shortage has confronted industry with a jump in electricity purchase costs, and the government spokesman said 400 megawatts, together with power from plants coming online by the end of summer, will be allocated to industry.

Cars

The car market stayed in correction on Monday. Per Mehr, in the first week of Mordad the market is caught between two opposing forces, rising inflation expectations and a heavy trading slump, and is waiting for clarity on prices and supply. On the 5 Mordad price board, the Peugeot 207 automatic with panoramic roof stood at 2.8 billion tomans and the manual Peugeot 207 with the ESP engine at 1.67 billion tomans. Today's offering of 600 Arisan 2 pickups on the Mercantile Exchange is the week's first supply test.

Building materials

Cement prices were flat in any meaningful sense on 5 Mordad: Tehran Cement's bulk Portland type 2 at 4,014,000 tomans per tonne and its 50 kg bag at 218,000 tomans; Abyek Cement at 3,673,000 tomans and 258,000 tomans respectively; and Saveh Cement's bag at 250,000 tomans. Bagged-cement price dispersion across the three producers remains wide.

Regional and global backdrop

Global markets were split on Monday. On Wall Street the S&P 500 closed essentially flat at 7,413.18 (up 0.02%), the Dow Jones rose 0.51% to 52,210.08, but the Nasdaq fell 0.18% to 24,932.08. The biggest event, however, was in East Asia: South Korea's KOSPI plunged 8% and triggered its circuit breaker, wiping out about 396 trillion won (close to $264 billion) in market value. Samsung Electronics fell 9% and SK Hynix 11%, and the chip selloff reached Tokyo as well (Nikkei down 0.65%). The channel to Tehran is indirect but real: a chip-stock rout drains global risk appetite, and that is the same current that dragged bitcoin and spot gold lower overnight.

Brent crude slipped 0.39% to $87.32 (6 Mordad, 07:59), settling below $90 after Sunday's steep drop, a figure that matters directly for Iran's foreign-currency budget. Nearby, the Turkish lira stayed close to its record low with the dollar at 47.349 lira (5 Mordad, 18:29), while the Central Bank of Türkiye held its policy rate unchanged for a fourth consecutive meeting in July; a weaker lira means cheaper Turkish goods in Iran's border trade. The dollar-yuan rate was at 6.7722 (5 Mordad, 21:34), essentially unchanged, which is neutral news for imports from China.

The takeaway

Yesterday's verdict is clear: it was the coin's day, not the dollar's. The dollar rose only 0.8%, but the Emami coin rose 2.21% and its premium 32.73%, on a night when spot gold fell. That means the engine driving domestic prices, at least yesterday, was neither the exchange rate nor the global market, but hedging demand inside the coin market itself. Remember one thing: the wider the premium grows, the larger the share of what you pay for a coin that is not metal but expectation, and expectation is the thing that reverses faster than any other number.

What to watch today

• The Exchange Center's gold bullion auction, 14:00 to 17:00. This is precisely the tool designed to shrink that premium; the volume offered and the cleared prices are today's first gauge.
• The bourse opening at 09:00. The question is whether the 5,050,000 level holds into a fifth session and whether refinery stocks keep leading.
• The offering of 600 Arisan 2 pickups on the Mercantile Exchange and the level of demand for it, as a thermometer for the car market.
• The Federal Reserve rate decision, the outcome of the 28 and 29 July meeting, due tomorrow, which bears directly on spot gold and crypto.
• Tether's behaviour against the cash dollar; if yesterday's positive spread holds, it signals continued hedging demand.

Dated events are tracked on the Sahmino market calendar.

Every figure in this report carries its own reference date and time, in Tehran local time. The separation of "what happened" from "why it happened" is deliberate: the analytical passages are readings of published data, not buy or sell recommendations.