It can often be a mistake to think financial markets are telling you useful things about real life. This is one of those times. As every reader will no doubt be aware, these are dark days in Israel. And the risk of a broader regional conflagration beyond Gaza is depressingly real. Markets, meanwhile, appear to be doing a very bad job of reflecting the gravity of the situation.
Investors’ muscle memory around outbursts of geopolitical tension is pretty strong. North Korean missile tests, the Arab Spring and the like typically trigger the same impact on markets as major natural disasters (in rich countries at least, I never said this was fair) — a flight to safety known, irritatingly, as “risk off”. This is irritating because people outside financial markets might quite reasonably think “risk off” means risk is falling. In fact, it means the degree of danger that investors are prepared to risk in a portfolio is declining.
In any case, the features of a flight to safety are consistent. In dark times, investors want safe stuff. Therefore, you see a push higher in government bond prices, particularly in US Treasuries. The dollar typically springs higher, as does the Swiss franc — another classic retreat. The Japanese yen, which is not quite the same kind of global currency, also does benefit when domestic investors pull overseas assets back home in times of trouble, or more accurately when traders around the world think they will. Gold prices normally rise.