Quick Reactions to Egypt

  • This isn't a perfect pattern match to the Euro Crisis which disrupted markets last year.
  • The most likely path here is the announcement of some kind of transition to a unity government and elections in 9 months. Most probably path will be a multistage process with a caretaker government with the recently named VP who has military/intelligence ties.
  • Egypt doesn't have oil, and while Suez has an impact on oil flows the bigger implications for authoritarian states in the gulf region as well as the big daddy "Saudi Arabia". Lots of potential for oil shocks.
  • In the short term, these transitions have huge risks as nobody wants another extremist government in the middle east. However, longer term republican/ representative type democracies in the region would break the extremely over used narrative that all the problems in the region are caused by the United States.
  • Reformed government in Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi, and the Gulf States should actually encourage reform in Iran as well. Do you think the highly educated population in Iran will put up with a dictatorship when it's neighbors have cascading reform?
  • All this change puts short term pressure on oil prices. It's not quite the same pattern match as what happened to Euro debt markets, and the "flight to quality" actually will give debt markets in Europe more slack in the hanging rope (i.e. time before restructure event).
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