Relative calm in the stock markets won’t last if Russian troops drive further into Ukraine
Weren’t stock markets meant to plunge when Russian troops were ordered over the border into Ukraine? Well, the FTSE 100 index opened 100 points lower, which fitted the script, but it quickly rebounded and spent most of the day in positive territory. It closed up 10 points: basically flat.
It was a reminder, for the umpteenth time, that stock markets are a reliably unreliable guide to geopolitics. As the fund manager Terry Smith points out often, trying to time macro events is virtually impossible since you need to know what the market was expecting and how it will react, and neither task is straightforward. Brexit and the election of President Trump were meant to shatter stock markets if they happened: share prices soared when they did.
