Every war is idiosyncratic; it has its own characteristics. Motivations, impacts, and outcomes can and do differ. It may be a futile exercise to compare the current Iranian conflict with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; nonetheless, attempting to highlight what is common and what is different in these geopolitical events could help assess how high oil prices might rise.
The whipsawing and day-trading attitude our market is experiencing has inevitably led to similar behaviour across all other investment arenas. The importance of the current war in and around Arabian skies is touched upon below, but to see bourse indices moving in degrees of multiple percentage points and sometimes double-figured ones, is almost as unsettling as the conflict itself. Still, Asian markets today open a little more brightly as some of the woes on the horizon are somewhat soothed.
The Efficient Market Hypothesis holds that asset prices reflect all available information at any given time. As a result, it is not possible to beat the market average on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. Contrarians argue that temporary mispricing upends this theory, which does not take into account behavioural biases such as greed, fear, or herd behaviour.
Copyright © 2026 TP ICAP