The United States and Iran decided to stop shooting at each other temporarily. Not forever. Just for a bit. Long enough to see if talking works better than the current strategy of making things worse.
Negotiations hit fresh hurdles over the weekend. Fresh hurdles. As if the old hurdles weren't doing the job. Someone looked at the existing pile of reasons this won't work and said we need newer ones. More contemporary obstacles. The previous disagreements were getting stale.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately started Googling which defense contractors to sell and which boring peace-dividend plays to buy. They will get both trades wrong. The pause will either end before their market orders fill or it'll last just long enough for them to panic-sell at a loss when some diplomat says something ambiguous on Twitter.
The phrase "give peace talks space" is doing a lot of work here. Space. Like peace talks are a delicate houseplant that needs room to breathe. Or a teenager who just needs some time to figure things out. The talks don't need space. They need both sides to agree on literally anything. Space is what you give someone when you're avoiding them.
Somewhere right now a guy with $847 in his Robinhood account is reading analyst reports about geopolitical risk premiums. He's learning about Strait of Hormuz shipping routes. He's building a thesis. He will lose money on crude oil ETFs he didn't know existed until Monday morning.
The temporary pause appeared to hold on Monday. Appeared to hold. That's the kind of confidence that makes you want to book a vacation to Tehran. The cease-fire is holding the same way your cousin's sobriety is holding. Technically true until it isn't.
None of this affects the charts. The charts don't care about peace talks. They care about where the next sucker places his order.
Photo by Saifee Art on Unsplash
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