The latest news from the Middle East is that Israel has instructed for all civilians in Gaza to evacuate the city and relocate to the south within the next 24 hours. The call is that „now is the time for war“ as the Israeli military is preparing to attack and social media is rife with talk of ‚genocide‘. Once again, fear is propagating in the echo chamber and that is leading to a similar reaction in markets that we saw on Monday.

10-year Treasury yields are down 9 bps to 4.620% while S&P 500 futures are also marked down by 0.3%, with European indices extending losses to a little over 1% mostly now. Meanwhile, gold is up 1% to $1,887 while WTI crude is up nearly 4% to $86.16 on the day currently. It’s exactly what you would expect on an escalation in the situation between Israel and Palestine.

This seems to be the case that markets are seeking shelter and it is not making it easy for traders and investors to read into the moves, especially after having seen how the bond market reacted yesterday to the US CPI data and poor Treasury auction.

In FX, the mood is more muted though as the dollar keeps little changed now after some mild weakness earlier. EUR/USD is flat at 1.0528 while USD/JPY is down just 0.1% to 149.60 on the day.

If there is nothing short ‚genocide‘ over the weekend, expect markets to turn things around again as they did earlier this week come next Monday.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.