{"id":1058,"date":"2011-01-31T10:15:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T15:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billlosey.com\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2011-01-31T10:15:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T15:15:48","slug":"unrest-in-egypt-what-does-it-mean-for-the-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/unrest-in-egypt-what-does-it-mean-for-the-markets\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrest In Egypt &#8211; What Does It Mean For The Markets?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Will the Mubarak government be toppled?<\/strong> Egyptians took to the streets in Cairo and other major cities Friday,  facing riot squads and armored personnel carriers as they demanded  political reforms and an end to the 30-year rule of the country\u2019s  president, Hosni Mubarak.<\/p>\n<p>The  Mubarak government shut down the nation\u2019s internet providers and mobile  phone network and imposed a nationwide nightly curfew within a 36-hour  period Thursday and Friday. In response, a huge crowd surrounded the  Cairo headquarters of Mubarak\u2019s National Democratic Party (which was set  on fire) and the nation\u2019s key radio and television headquarters. Great Britain\u2019s <em>Telegraph<\/em> reported that 870 in the crowd suffered injuries, with some protestors being shot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How did the markets interpret the turmoil?<\/strong> The reaction was as expected: stocks dived, oil and gold prices  immediately climbed and there was renewed interest in the dollar and  U.S. government bonds.<\/p>\n<p>Gold  gained $22.30 (1.69%) on the COMEX, while oil rose $3.70 (4.32%) on the  NYMEX. At the end of the U.S. trading day, gold settled at $1,340.70 per ounce and oil had topped $89 per barrel ($89.34). The U.S. Dollar Index moved north 0.55% on the day.<\/p>\n<p>The  Dow, NASDAQ and S&amp;P 500 all tumbled Friday, though the descent also  reflected disappointment over earnings reports from Ford and Amazon. On  the day, the Dow fell 166.13, the S&amp;P slipped 23.20 and the NASDAQ  dropped 68.39.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Basically, this is putting Europe on the back burner. <\/strong>For  about a year, Wall Street has been watching the sovereign debt crisis  in the EU. Now the focus shifts, or at least is split.<\/p>\n<p>What if the Suez Canal is shut down?  The possibility has come up given the level of Egypt\u2019s unrest. It  wouldn\u2019t be just oil prices that would suddenly spike. Prices of other  hard assets could rise as well, because the canal is a vital shipping  channel for many other raw materials. Fear was back Friday: the CBOE  VIX, the so-called \u201cfear index\u201d, was up 23.30 and hit an intraday high  unseen since December 2.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Was this simply the cue Wall Street had been looking for? <\/strong>There  was the sense recently that stocks had been overbought, that some kind  of selloff was coming. (After all, the Dow had been on an eight-week  winning streak.) Friday\u2019s events may have given institutional investors  the sell signal they were waiting on \u2013 volume was considerable on Wall  Street during the trading day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is this an isolated geopolitical event, or a spark?<\/strong> That, perhaps, is Wall Street\u2019s biggest worry. Many observers think the  demonstrations and unrest in Egypt were directly inspired by earlier  protests in Tunisia and Lebanon. The big question is whether that  inspiration will now spread to other Middle East nations with  authoritarian governments, such as Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Today\u00a0may  very well be an\u00a0interesting day on Wall Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will the Mubarak government be toppled? Egyptians took to the streets in Cairo and other major cities Friday, facing riot squads and armored personnel carriers as they demanded political reforms and an end to the 30-year rule of the country\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billlosey.com\/knowledge-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}