FormerXBC Inc XEBEQ

RE:It won't be as bad as you think

[tamaracktop]

tamaracktop wrote: The market has been discounting Putin's agression for several weeks.

Usually the market is quick to shrug off wars and revert to the ultimate determinate of stock prices, corporate profits and their outlook.
The market ceratinly liked Home Depot's numbers and guidance this morning.

I remember the first night the jets took off in Operation Desert Shield after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
I thought for sure the market would start tanking the very next day.
It rallied.

I realize Iraq isn't Russia, but there are still many possible outcomes, and the market has already probably mostly discounted the worst.

No one can know for sure how this will end, but the unknown is becoming the known.
Maybe Putin will settle for Donetsk and Luhansk, it's anybody's guess.

At least that would allow him to save face.
If his original intention was to put the brakes on Nato, he's having the opposite effect.
He's unifying it.

Nothing he does will come without a cost, just look at what the ruble and Russian banks did yesterday.

Putin is not without opposition, although he sometimes incarcerates the most vocal ones, like Navalny.

He can't incarcerate his population, and his popularity will suffer when the body-bags start coming home in greater numbers.
Ukraine has the largest armed forces in Europe, and is second only to Russia in the region.
As well, it's very experienced and now has anti-tank weapons and the stinger missiles that some say turned the war in Afghanistan.

Fighting separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk has already been going on for 8 years.
Let Putin have them.

I don't profess to be an expert, but in my experience the market has shrugged off wars to a surprising extent.

The US is already involved in 4 active conflicts right now, in Iraq,Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
As we speak there are 10 wars going on in the world.

This is becoming old news.
If you think it's all over for the market,
it isn't.

Tomorrow is another day.