The United States, France, and the United Kingdom have carried out a series of airstrikes on the war-torn country of Syria. They have specifically targeted facilities that enable the Asaad Regime to carry out chem-warfare attacks. 

In a place where things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, this latest escalation is rather significant as it brings in new players who were previously on the sidelines.

Some of the more active players like Russia and Iran are not very happy to have the additional company.

The markets, for their part, seem to be largely unphased by all of this. Stocks have come down slightly but there hasn’t been a massive rush to safe-haven assets as one might expect.

Today’s Highlights

Traditional Markets

Earnings season has kicked off on Wall Street and this should be a great one. Thanks to Donald Trump’s tax cuts and additional stimulus, corporate earnings should be through the roof.

@TheBigBanks who reported on Friday have smashed expectations with JP Morgan’s profits rising 35% in the first quarter, Citi Group raising their earnings per share by 24%, and Wells Fargo seeing profits rise despite a new scandal. 

As we can see from the charts above, the great earnings may have propped up the prices a bit but they certainly didn’t send them flying.

It will be interesting to see how the season progresses and to what extent the reports are overshadowed by geopolitics and already high valuations in the market.

Russian Divergence

Traditionally, the Russian Ruble is most correlated with Crude Oil because it is the number one export from the country.

So we’ve seen before how a sharp rise in the price of Crude can affect a similar movement from the Russian Ruble. However, over the last week, we’ve seen them moving in opposite directions as the Ruble is under pressure by international forces and the supply of crude oil is under question.