It’s been a busy week around the world, and particularly here at home in Puerto Rico, where we were without power for a bit after the string of earthquakes on the southern coast on Wednesday. Luckily, we have since recovered and are stabilizing pretty quickly. That was no Hurricane Maria, I’ll say that much.
In Iran, geopolitical tensions are simmering at a near-boil after the United States’ assassination last week of Qassem Soleimani. As you know, Iranian forces responded this week, firing missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq. The fact that they failed to hit any soldiers is a good thing, obviously, and it looks to have been intentional. My thinking here is that Iran blinked first in this standoff as I recently advised they should, given the instant win of having Iraq vote to kick the U.S. out.
Markets In Holding Pattern
Nevertheless, the fluctuations we were expecting in the markets as a result of the Iranian conflict haven’t come to fruition quite yet. We’re still in this holding pattern, where two scenarios are possible, but the near-term blow-off top looking more likely after Iran’s tepid response. What we do know is that markets haven’t been given any specific reason to go down, now, so it’s likely they’ll continue to climb a bit through the first few months of 2020 and that could form a top by March.
Remember, this is a different type of global conflict, one raised over geopolitical tensions, not the pursuit of a commodity, so we should expect to see markets and entities like precious metals move differently than usual. That goes for gold and silver, especially – neither of the two have changed course much in response to this week’s news. They’re still moving in those bullish trends, but silver is not advancing faster than gold, as it usually does.