While the Australian market is busy watching Wall Street, gold, and oil prices – and the prices of relevant stocks exposed to those assets – in these interesting times in March, there’s a whole world out there.
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Most interesting, at least if you’re one of 30 people in the country who find this kind of thing interesting, is what’s happening on international markets in response to the ongoing Iran-war-and-Strait-of-Hormuz-blockade geopolitical extravaganza.
Cast your eye upon India’s version of the ASX50, the NIFTY50 – which, due in large part to being heavily reliant on oil imports that need to travel through the Strait of Hormuz, is down -9% over the last month.
(A rebound on the Tuesday session has pared some losses that saw the index worse off to start the week.)
Here’s something I like to say a lot: Just look at the following line chart.
In fact, the Middle East conflict has actually led Citi analysts to cut their EOY targets for the NIFTY50 – despite the fact that other investment banks have largely left Wall Street targets intact, India’s not so lucky.
But it’s not a story of losers, exclusively.
Good time for Russian oil
After the U.S. effectively allowed Russian oil back onto the (legitimate) energy market, and as the country stands to do more business with countries perhaps not so ideologically aligned with the West in the face of the Middle East’s, uh, issues – you can probably see where this is going.
Take a look at the month Moscow-listed Kremlin-owned Russian NOC Rosneft is having on the share market over there.
In fact, the entire Russian market is having a pretty good month, relative to where it started – worth noting, of course, is that like Australia, Russia is heavily export-focused, and so naturally some of its biggest index constituents are resources players in O&G.
That’s telling: The ASX200 is down -3.9% over the last month, while the S&P 500 is down -2% MoM. The Tehran Stock Exchange, meanwhile – yes, Iran has a stock market – has been suspended since late February, according to reports (while other sources indicate an earlier suspension on February 16.)
The Iranian bourse describes itself as the best performing in the world, which is, well… no comment.
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