{"id":48046,"date":"2014-03-03T19:19:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T00:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=48046"},"modified":"2014-03-03T19:19:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T00:19:27","slug":"could-the-ukraine-crisis-be-the-one-that-sticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2014\/03\/03\/could-the-ukraine-crisis-be-the-one-that-sticks\/","title":{"rendered":"Could The Ukraine Crisis Be The One That Sticks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/10cDh0v\" target=\"_blank\"><u>MoneyMorning.com.au<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re a  medium- to long-term <em>Money Morning<\/em> reader you&#8217;ll know we&#8217;ve thumbed our nose at every so-called <strong>crisis<\/strong> for the  past two years.<\/p>\n<p>There have  been a wide variety of crises too.<\/p>\n<p>From  interest rate crises, to currency crises, to political crises, to banking and  emerging markets crises&#8230;you&#8217;ve seen them all.<\/p>\n<p>But what you  haven&#8217;t seen is the event that all these crises are supposed to result in &#8211; a  wholesale crash in financial markets and an accompanying localised or global economic recession.<\/p>\n<p>Could that  change if the &#8216;<strong>Ukraine Crisis<\/strong>&#8216; turns out to be a much bigger one than anyone currently thinks?<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s  got all the hallmarks of a crisis.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s the  threat of war&#8230;the threat of sanctions&#8230;the threat of a debt default&#8230;the threat  of energy supply disruptions&#8230;and the overall economic impact if these issues  flow through to <strong>financial markets<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>With all the  so-called crises that have gone before, we&#8217;ve quickly dismissed them as not  even a storm in a teacup &#8211; more like a breeze in a thimble. They were nothing.<\/p>\n<p>But what  about Russia making trouble in Ukraine? That&#8217;s got to be worth at least a short  pause before we dismiss it out of hand.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not the  first time Russia has turned up on the opposing side to the West. Most people  have doubtless already forgotten about the last international crisis that  almost led to war &#8211; Syria.<\/p>\n<p>That was  Russia on one side and the United States on the other side.<\/p>\n<p>The outcome?  Erm, nothing of any consequence. Certainly nothing that has caused lasting  damage to stock market valuations.<\/p>\n<p>Some may say it&#8217;s inappropriate to talk about such things when the world is perhaps on the  edge of another war. But isn&#8217;t that why you&#8217;re here? To find out the impact of  these things on your wealth?<\/p>\n<p>If you want  war analysis, we&#8217;ll suggest you go and watch SBS or the ABC. Or even the  supposed intelligence experts who pop up on CNBC and Bloomberg to bang on about  that sort of thing. But us, we&#8217;ll stick to what we know: stocks.<\/p>\n<h2>Another Faux Crisis or Real Deal?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p>The world&#8217;s  stock markets went into sell-off overdrive overnight.<\/p>\n<p>The Euro  Stoxx 50, an index of leading European stocks, fell 3%. The UK&#8217;s FTSE 100 index  fell 1.5%. And the German DAX index fell 3.4%.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian  MICEX index slumped 10.8%.<\/p>\n<p>The bad news  carried over into the US markets, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell  as much as 1.5% before recovering some of the lost ground in the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Will this  flow through to<a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/U9VeN4\" title=\"more on the Aussie Market \"> the Aussie market<\/a> today? It&#8217;s possible. The question for Aussie  investors is whether this is just another faux crisis, or if it&#8217;s the real  deal.<\/p>\n<p>It would be  easy to lump the Ukraine crisis in with others such as Syria, Libya or even the  recent but now forgotten Argentinian debt crisis. But it is fair to say that  what&#8217;s going on in <strong>Ukraine<\/strong> is more important than those events from an economic  standpoint&#8230;especially for Western Europe.<\/p>\n<p>You should  remember that Europe gets around a quarter of its natural gas supplies from  Russia, via a pipeline that happens to go through Ukraine. So should a full-scale  conflict break out between Russia and Ukraine it&#8217;s likely that the Russians  would shut down this pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s  potentially a real problem. However, as serious as it may be, markets have a  funny habit of quickly solving problems. That&#8217;s why markets work. For instance,  there are other potential pipeline routes that avoid Ukraine. It&#8217;s hard to  imagine that Europe would refuse to accept Russia&#8217;s natural gas supplies even  if Russia declared war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>So, is it  time to panic?<\/p>\n<h2>This Isn&#8217;t The Crash They&#8217;re Looking For<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p>There are  some commentators out there who seem to talk out of both sides of their mouth.  They&#8217;ll tell you something could be a real problem, and then when it all calms  down they say they knew it would be fine all along.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, sure.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not  how we roll.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, you  should always take some precautions with your <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/V6n2lJ\" title=\"more on investments\">investments<\/a>. That&#8217;s why for the  past four years we&#8217;ve recommended that you have a healthy holding in cash and  gold (by the way, the <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1288LW8\" title=\"more on the gold price\">gold price <\/a>has done pretty well the past few days).<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s  something you should constantly monitor, not just when trouble brews up to the  surface.<\/p>\n<p>And when it  comes to <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/V6n2lL\" title=\"more on stocks\">stocks<\/a>, we&#8217;ve long said that most investors shouldn&#8217;t have more than  50% of their wealth tied up in a combination of growth and income stocks  anyway. We don&#8217;t see any reason right now to change that advice.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you  could see the Aussie market fall by 5% or so, as it did in January. But like  then, we would see that as an opportunity to buy into unfairly beaten down  growth and income stocks.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line:  we&#8217;ll go on record again and say that there are far too many investors and  so-called experts fighting to be the hero. They&#8217;re desperate to call the next  full-scale market meltdown.<\/p>\n<p>So far,  they&#8217;re up to about their 30th attempt at picking it. They&#8217;ve got it wrong each  time. The law of averages says they&#8217;ll get one right, but this just isn&#8217;t it.<\/p>\n<p>Our advice  is to use the opportunity (if it arises) to buy stocks from those senselessly  selling in a blind panic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cheers,<br \/>\n  Kris<a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1992Ebo\">+<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>From the Port Phillip Publishing Library<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Special  Report: <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1i0swZN\" target=\"_blank\">Three Aussie Miners Set to Lead the Resource Sector&#8217;s Epic Comeback<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1i8lAOx\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/Nk9u5P\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1dVb71B\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1i8lAOz\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1dVb71E\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1i8lAOB\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1dVb5a5\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><br \/>\nBy <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/10cDh0v\" target=\"_blank\"><u>MoneyMorning.com.au<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By MoneyMorning.com.au If you&#8217;re a medium- to long-term Money Morning reader you&#8217;ll know we&#8217;ve thumbed our nose at every so-called crisis for the past two years. There have been a wide variety of crises too. From interest rate crises, to currency crises, to political crises, to banking and emerging markets crises&#8230;you&#8217;ve seen them all. But &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2014\/03\/03\/could-the-ukraine-crisis-be-the-one-that-sticks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Could The Ukraine Crisis Be The One That Sticks?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}