1. World taking Russian threat to Ukraine seriously
The world is starting to take the Russian threat to Ukraine seriously with stock markets down and the oil price spiking towards US$100. The trigger for real fear was the failure of talks between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden. As a consequence, Mr Biden informed his Russian rival that the world would punish and isolate his country, which is a big global supplier of oil and gas. That’s why the oil price spiked over the weekend.

2. WAR: a new curveball for stock markets
The fear of war is set to send stocks down today after the Dow Jones index dropped over 500 points on Friday in New York. For weeks, stock markets have been nervous about interest rates, which are set to rise this year, and now share players have a new curveball to deal with called WAR! And it comes in a big week for company reporting, with market-important operations such as BHP, Fortescue, CSL, Santos, Telstra and QBE all reporting this week. How investors can ignore the threat of war to concentrate on a company’s performance will be a challenge.

3. Pakistan PM fears worst is yet to come in Afghanistan
The US refusal to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan, coupled with sanctions and frozen assets, could push the country into chaos and threaten Pakistan’s stability, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Sunday. Khan said in an interview on CNN’s ‘Fareed Zakaria GPS’ that the current humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, caused in part by the abrupt cancellation of foreign aid to the country after the Taliban took over last year, has reverberated in neighbouring Pakistan. 

4. Crypto could plunge on rising rates
Meanwhile, Bitcoin investors won’t like the call that rising interest rates could send the cryptocurrency down to US$10,000! Until ‘interest rates will rise’ talk, many cryptocurrency commentators tipped Bitcoin would hit US$100,000 but lately because of the fear of higher interest rates, the price has fallen to US$43,000. And now US broker, Stifel has predicted the price could fall to $US10,000 by 2023 and the reason will be because the US central bank could raise interest rates too many times and too quickly.

5. ASX to dip as Wall St falls on oil price surge
The AUD is +0.5% to 71.36 US cents while on Wall St: On Wall St: Dow -1.4% S&P 500 -1.9% Nasdaq -2.8%. In Europe: Stoxx 50 -1% FTSE -0.1% DAX -0.4% CAC -1.3%. 2-year yield: US 1.50% Australia 1.17%. 10-year yield: US 1.94% Australia 2.21%.