Following the flash of optimism at Thursday’s session that drove Wall Street to new all-time highs, investors were today confronted with news of an attack by US military forces in Baghdad that resulted in the death of Qassem Soleimani, Head of Iran’s elite group Quds Force, a personality long linked to attacks on US interests and their allies. An operation that has already led Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to pledge harsh retaliation, it is not yet clear what kind of operations are on the table, but I recall Iran being blamed for the attack, in September to Saudi Aramco, which provisionally restricted oil production by about 50% of Saudi Arabia.
Whatever the following chapters of this story, the market immediately preferred to seek protection by buying the usual refuge assets like gold, Yen, utilities and in this specific case crude, given the possibility that this incident will affect the production of “black gold” in the region. . In the opposite direction are the remaining nine sectors of the S&P500, which are sailing in the red now, and the losses are nothing extraordinary and are stable, that is, it may only be a fait diver.
Photo by Mostafa Meraji.
