The key indices of the US stock market - Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 - ended Friday with a new fall and a new update of their local lows. Therefore, the conclusion is still obvious: the fall continues, and it can last as long as the fall of bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market. Of course, stocks are still a much more stable asset than cryptocurrencies. It should be recalled that stocks are securities backed by real assets, factories, companies, production, and so on. That is, real assets. Therefore, the stock cannot fall to zero. But cryptocurrencies, which are useless code, may well. However, it does not play a big role now, since other factors are in the first place now. We have already said repeatedly that the Fed (like other central banks in the world) has taken a course to tighten monetary policy, so the demand for safe assets will grow, and for risky assets - will fall. This is normal for times when rates are rising and the money supply is decreasing. But the most important thing to remember is that the Fed has raised the rate only twice so far, and the QT (quantitative tightening) program will work only in a month and a half. That is, the American regulator is only at the very beginning of a long path of tightening, and the NASDAQ index, for example, has already fallen by 35-40% (the maximum value is 16,500, now it is 11,835). Thus, we believe that the decline will continue further.

There has been practically no news from Ukraine in recent days. Western weapons continue to pour in a huge stream, Kyiv openly declares that in a month and a half it will be ready to launch a counteroffensive. Vladimir Zelensky openly declares that military operations will be conducted until the moment when Ukraine completely liberates all its territories, including Crimea and Donbas. Russian troops have almost completely focused on expanding the borders of the LPR and DPR, but have not made significant progress in moving further into Ukraine. In some areas, the Russian army has begun to build barricades and is preparing for defense. There was no news from Moscow. Everything is quiet in Transnistria, everything is quiet in Belarus, too. Thus, the key topics now are the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, which Turkey is blocking, and the sixth package of economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, which Hungary is blocking. For example, information became known yesterday that Turkey could block the entry of Finns and Swedes into NATO for the next 20 years, although earlier Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ankara's position would not be a hindrance. It is these topics that will play a big role in the coming weeks. From our point of view, the conflict may well spill out beyond the borders of Ukraine, so risky assets continue to remain risky and demand for them may fall further due to geopolitics.