Friday Briefing: The markets might not be spooked but they are very worried

Friday Briefing

For anyone who has been even mildly paying attention to markets for the past five or even ten years, you’d be forgiven for assuming that news of the US carrying out a military airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would spark some chaos.

Indeed, we are approaching the one-year anniversary of the yen-carry-trade/US labour stats wobble which was arguably a lower-stakes event but still managed to trigger one of the deepest one-day selloffs on record. And yet the US intervention in the Middle East has hardly shaken the sides. In fact, equities, and US stocks in particular, have actually been going up, little by little, to the point that the S&P 500 is teetering on its pre-Liberation Day peak. NATO summit sends defence stocks up as states expected to diverge on 5% military spending target When I first saw the market's r...