February 2022 - The Russian invasion of Ukraine last week has increased uncertainty in the markets and thus pushed stocks lower. The situation is very fluid, and the ultimate outcome is far from known. We expect many twists and turns on the way to a resolution and we believe it will likely take some time to resolve. There are three main impacts to the U.S. stock market: geopolitical uncertainty increasing volatility, direct effects on companies that sell to Russia and Ukraine, and the secondary effects of potential sanctions against Russia.
 
The stock market does not like uncertainty and therefore, this has been the biggest impact from the invasion. While this event dominates the news, we believe the market will ultimately become comfortable with the situation and the news flow will have less of an impact, similar to how COVID initially caused a substantial decline in the market, but the most recent Omicron wave had a negligible impact despite cases being much higher. The stock market has a history of moving past geopolitical shocks within a relatively short period of time.