Why and when the markets stopped caring about the Russia-Ukraine conflict? A short thread🧵

The news coming in from Ukraine remains concerning with huge losses and humanitarian crisis.

But for the last 10 days the markets seems to 'Not Care' and react to the news.

Read why

Markets become very jittery if they can sense a large financial panic because of an external event.

One gauge to measure what the market is pricing-in is the funding stress indicator.

For instance, the FRA-OIS spread in US measures the funding stress in interbank markets.

The FRA-OIS spread, which measures the gap between the U.S three-month forward rate agreement and the overnight index swap rate, is an indicator similar to the TED Spread.

TED spread gained a large analyst following during the global financial crisis in 2008.

The FRA/OIS spread expanded from under 5bps to 38bps since Russia Ukraine crisis began.

The same spread had jumped to 80 from 10 during the COVID crisis scare before US Fed and other central banks stepped in.

Take a look at the graph.

What does this mean?

Equity, bonds and currency markets are most sensitive to problems in interbank markets. Why?

Because interbank markets runs financial markets to a very degree. From margin payment in f&o segment, to short term credit, to credit for economy ....