The morning of last Sunday, seven B2 Spirits Bomberos of the US Air Force launched a long dozen bombs antibunker About Iranian nuclear complexes Fordow, Natanz and Isfahán. It was part of the coordinated attack order declared by Donald Trump as support for the almost two weeks of Israeli bombings to the Persian territory, which does not hide the goal of Washington and Tel Aviv to force the unconditional surrender of Tehran, to overthrow the Ayatolas regime and to end the atomic program of the Islamic Republic.
The 12 -day war, as the prolific creator of content that lives in the White House has baptized, should have created a more than remarkable seizure in markets that have become accustomed to volatility since the magician executor (Make America Great Again) took the reins of the US government and in a world order in an almost constant state of mutation. But not. The reaction chosen by investors has touched indifference, as if they felt immune to the tsunami Geestratic that is the Israeli attack, first, and the American defense to its ally, later.
This immutable attitude seems offensive to George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures, which focuses this disturbing dialectical debate with an issue: Has the 12 -day war been the beginning of a new conflict in the Middle East or the end of tension in the region?
This decalogue reveals some of the keys to this dissociation between markets and geopolitics, with too many pieces out of place that have dislodged the international chess board.
1.- Have the geostrategic threats of investors' codes of conduct? Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is one of those who consider that the 12 -day war has not ended as Trump proclaims and that hostilities can be again triggered at any time because Middle East “has entered into a new dimension.”
Haass reminds the US president that a war contest “is started by a side, but all parties involved for the signature of the armistice are needed”, and in this new Middle East crisis, “the initiative has moved from Israel to the US and Iran, who must decide whether after the mutual attacks the principle of the end of the end or the end of the beginning is proclaimed.” In line with the premise raised by Friedman.
2.- The markets contribute calm! “There is nothing as coward as one million dollars. ”It is the meaning installed in the investment jargon for decades to explain the cowardice of money in the stock market parks. Prpense to leakage before the slightest alarm signal. It does not seem that this maxim has been fulfilled in an exercise already volatile like the current and loaded with ups and downs, paratoge (of the freest market in the world!), The structural fall of the dollar or the parenthesis to the Exceptionalism of Wall Street – which gives American values an almost divine profitability premium – within unleashed geopolitical voltages.
However, they have become strong. Precisely when the conflict threatens to extend to the confines of the Middle East and infect the international community. The oil showed a bullish differential, exceeded 81 dollars -the barrel of Brent, European -but quickly fell to $ 78, it was installed next 70 and the market consensus almost immediately restored its average prognosis of $ 65 for the rest of the year.
The ounce of gold calculated the patron of the Green ticketwithout even that bearable lightness of the Black goldand even allowed to slide from $ 3,300. It is still a refuge value, but without alterations, and leaving aside, on this occasion, its geopolitical coverage status. The dollar rose, although it returned to its bassist path and the capital markets were positioned near the maximum of the year.
3.- Can 14 American bombs change the world order? Apparently yes. Investors have given preference to the fact that Iran is not “45 minutes to obtain the atomic bomb” as Tony Blair warned about Iraq to falsely justify post-11s invasion, because American bombings have destroyed their incipient nuclear arsenal. The Iranian moderate reaction against the US military base in Qatar has also been installed in the stock climate and, above all, its intention not to close, for the moment, the Ormuz Strait. Despite the Plácet that has granted his Parliament.
This geostrategic game of maximum danger, with too many aces in the manga. The greatest of them, the contradiction of the Pentagon to Trump that the attack only partially damaged the Iranian nuclear program. Although the CIA has immediately left in support of the leader of the magician.
4.- Is Ormuz the key that opens Pandora's box? The entrance door to the Persian and exit of the fifth part of the merchant oil traffic. Of just 34 kilometers, its bottleneck is at the mercy of Tehran, owner of naval traffic. But, with their obstruction, I would not only collapse the activity and stress prices, but would scare allies such as Qatar, dominator of the gas market, China and their dependence on fossil fuels, or Russia with which it shares business alliances and pipelines that connect its energy sectors.
Similarly, it would deteriorate the Iranian economic picture, with inflation that touches 40% and an anemic activity with acute budget distortions. Ormuz is also a double -edged sword for the Islamic Republic. Above all, if you intend to advance with a certain strategic Pax in your nuclear plans.
5.- Everything that goes up, goes down? Another dogma of inverter faith remembers this paradox of the parabola of the good believer when the S&P 500, after its debacle for the “tariff climbing chaotic” of the Trump administration, has gathered to 22 times the expected profits in the next 12 months, 35% above its long -term average, according to data collected by Bloomberg of about twenty metric that the analysts use. The reminder points to the fact that this excess of valuation is blurred by the decoupling between geopolitical risks and behavior of stock market values.
Bloomberg Intelligence It emphasizes this decoupling to warn that the profits of the S&P 500, about to reach its February historical maximum, they should increase 30% in 12 months so that their values obtain “stable and reasonable” prices. Kevin Gordon, an analyst at Charles Schwab, admits that “there is too much optimism” on Wall Street.
6.- Central banks, Avizor eye. Although all eyes go to an imperturbable Federal Reserve in the face of new risks of inflation that resists lowering the limit of 2% and the political interference of the White House tenant. However, the oil truce and an incipient, although mild, economic reactivation linked to commercial rectifications and the tax reform that the Republican leader had in mind, could anticipate two downward movements of the price of money in the US.
Of course, one in September and another in October is contemplated in the market. Each, in addition, of a quarterfinal. Slight to redirect types that range between 4.25% and 4.50%.
7.- The global economic patient has a pulse. June PMI indicators, in their first flash Combined Industry and Services, have given signs of life. In the US and Japan they are close to leaving the terrain of contraction while in Europe it continues its improvement. The analytical reading speaks that the bad omens of the tariff rise have been left behind and that the danger to the collateral damage of a rise in the crude for the conflict in the Middle East has been diluted.
8.- Energy market with wide supply and fluid supply. The two features that have buried any vestige of oil and gas collapse. This is believed by Ziad Daoud, chief economist of emerging markets and researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School. “The same urgency that could be expected a few years ago has not emerged, when the US was worried about its dependence on the Gulf's energy”, who affects the “existence of a dissociation between geopolitical events and the oil market that would justify this disconnection.”
9.- Trump takes blind trust. Tariffs, intervention against Iran and now, another new twist to the Fed. The leader of the Grand Old Party (GOP), who has just jumped all constitutional springs by not asking for Congress to attack the Islamic regime, has threatened to advance the relief of Jerome Powell. It does not endure the prudence of the monetary authority. Nor respects the sacrosanct neoliberal principle of political non -interference in central banks.
The dollar backed its lowest value in three years for it and the fear of new capital leaks from Wall Street and the rebounds of the American Treasury bonds have rerecate again. Although again without an apparent structural concern on the part of investors.
10. Are right markets? There are those who say that they are increasingly national-populist. Chriss Patten, last governor of Hong-Kong and former European commissioner, highlights the fracture that Iran creates in the West and Trump's “contempt for democratic values and for the stability of the liberal system”, which is-Benn Steil, international economic director of the Cfr- “in full disorder” for the obsession out of Trump to replace multilateralism, now with its rejection of confirming appeal judges in the WTO- for national security to “cover up a wave of mercantilism” that will erode the rules of the game and, therefore, the disappearance of the American soft-power for a “more authoritarian world”.
Two meanings that, in addition, are combined with the “fragile peace” in the Middle East that proclaims Financial Times and the “double shock” that, in the opinion of Stephen Roach, former chief of Morgan Stanley in Asia and professor at Yale, will cause war and tariffs to the global economy.
