As Iran started firing missiles at a US air base in Qatar on Monday, oil traders responded with striking speed — not by buying, but by selling.
Within seven minutes of the first launch at about 5.30pm London time, Brent crude, the international benchmark, began to slide. It took only 20 minutes for the losses to accelerate to 3 per cent. By 7.30pm, the price had fallen 7.2 per cent to $71.48, the sharpest daily drop in nearly three years.
The speed of the sell-off in a market that typically surges at any sign of geopolitical strife caught many by surprise. Even as civilians took cover and television channels broadcast images of missiles in the night sky, traders had already correctly concluded that the attacks would reduce, rather than heighten, tensions between the US, Israel and Iran.