Whoever came up with the phrase “no news is good news” clearly wasn’t long gold or oil futures Monday. The latter in particular tend to perk up when headlines emanate from the Middle East, home to more than half of the planet’s proven crude reserves . But while armed conflict in Syria and Yemen and unrest in producers Iraq and Libya have failed to lift prices from their nearly 11-year low, a war of words between Saudi Arabia and Iran that escalated throughout the weekend got the market’s attention. Oil prices spiked more than 3%. The reaction was a knee-jerk one, of course; the spat hasn’t subtracted a single drop from the crude glut that hangs over the market. That is why the gains likely evaporated in the face of downbeat economic news from China on Monday and global-stock market weakness that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall […]