Stock Volatility Isn’t About Russia

Stock Volatility Isn’t About Russia

The beauty about lines on charts is that there's only four ways you can describe them: horizontal, vertical, and sloped up or down. Drawing lines on charts enables us to describe, with as purely objective terms as are available, what the price of an asset is doing. As long as we all have the same definitions of these lines, we can (hopefully) agree when the direction of a line changes. Not a single one of the most important lines in the market has changed direction since the Russian threat to Ukraine became daily news, which I'll argue was about the third week of January. The few stock charts that were going up still are, and the ones that were going down continue to do so. Certain aspects of this geopolitical narrative may be accelerating certain trends – like crude going higher, or the Russian Stock ETF extending to new lows after peaking in November. Guess what else peaked in November? Cloud stocks. Chipmakers. The Nasdaq! Did Russia do that? I remember most people talking about Omicron back then. If an invasion of Ukraine leads to a global conflict, there certainly will be economic impact. But right now, the only major