Betty Liu explains financial market impacts from global unrest

How can global unrest impact financial markets?

So geopolitical events do affect financial markets. And these events are everything from wars, civil unrest, natural disaster, terrorism. During those times, investors flock to safe haven assets. So, that can be gold, it can be defensive stocks that generally have stable earnings and dividends. As you saw back in 9/11, investors flocked to safe haven assets.

How did the markets respond to the recent events in Iran?

So, Iran is in a region that accounts for about a third of the world's oil. So, what you saw was oil prices spike to a seven year high to seventy dollars a barrel. There was concern at that time that basically, oil production would be disrupted. And so that's why you saw investors flock to safe haven assets.