UnNews:Markets shrug off Paris attacks
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Markets shrug off Paris attacks |
16 November 2015
NEW YORK -- European stock markets finished upward and American futures were rosy, as traders concluded that Friday's events in Paris meant business as usual.
On Friday, three "lone-wolf" attackers with automatic weapons improbably converged on the same Paris theater and gave a critical review of the performance, while by unimaginable coincidence, additional lone wolves converged on a soccer stadium and rooted against both teams and their fans with the same loud noisemakers. The weekend was full of Moments of Silence before NFL football games — which, if it continued into Monday, would disrupt business in the trading pits. However, politicians broke the silence with blather about global warming and doubts that there was proof that ISIS was involved — as President Obama has subjected this al-Qaeda "junior varsity" to a successful strategy of containment — until ISIS claimed responsibility. The familiar rhetoric reassured traders and brought new buyers into the market.
"I don't want to say that we have got used to these things, but the markets have learnt that a suicide attack in Paris is a good time to take a long position," Commerzbank economist Peter Dixon said.
As France launched large-scale air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, shrewd traders sensed that lucrative re-orders of ammunition were only a matter of time and even the doldrums in oil futures might be over.
The Democratic Party held another debate, where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agreed that Bush should never have gone into Iraq and America should recruit 100,000 new residents per year from the region and give them free cell phones, Sharia courts, and suicide vests. The Republican Party debates, meanwhile, have been paralyzed by a loud heckler on-stage with the politicians. This has further reassured traders that the next four years in the U.S. will be just as clueless as the last eight, which have been a windfall for the blue chips.
Japan joined the stock rally as data showed that its economy slipped back into recession in the July-to-September quarter. The current recession is thus the "quintuple-dip" variety, as good for stocks as it is for ice cream cones. Traders anticipate another decade of familiar, comfortable stagnation, with record exports of dithering and eqivocation, free of the annoying chore of analyzing any new trends.
Sources[edit]
- Nigel Stephenson "Global stocks reverse losses as market impact from Paris attacks seen limited". Reuters, November 16, 2015