The global financial markets are now hugely complex, with traders and analysts around the world looking closely for signs of movement. What are some of the most important factors to be aware of that impact the financial markets?

Geopolitical events

With news breaking from different countries throughout the day, many different stories could affect the markets on any given day. For instance, economic indicators such as the European Central Bank’s inflation rates and gross domestic product numbers released by each country can determine which direction the markets take. Stocks, currencies and other financial instruments can all vary depending on these areas.

Major events such as war breaking out, natural disasters and elections also have an effect. When we look at the commodities market, climate change is an issue to bear in mind, with unusual weather sometimes causing scarcity or abundance of a certain product.

An interesting aspect of the modern financial world is the way that the different markets are linked. This means that any important event or news story that affects one area could easily affect another, even if the link isn’t obvious at first sight. We can also see how local shocks and events can quickly have an effect at a global level.

The financial crisis of 2008 is a good example, as it started with a serious downturn in the US housing market. Although this appeared to be a localized issue at first, it soon revealed some major issues with the global banking setup that caused problems around the planet affecting millions of people and diverse industries.

Speculation and investment trends

The previous factors all point toward the markets changing, and there’s no shortage of traders around the world waiting to see what happens next and how they can benefit. This means that we need to take into account other issues such as speculation and investment trends in the markets.

Armed with a variety of tools, including candlestick charts, traders try to identify trends such as support and resistance levels. They use the information they glean from the charts to make their moves, which can influence the general market if enough people make the same moves or if the amounts involved are significant.

Once an investment trend begins, it can have a knock-on effect that would have been impossible to predict at the outset. The example of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies shows how something that starts small can grow impressively. Cryptocurrencies have now gained enough mainstream appeal to influence and disrupt many industries, from healthcare to gaming and banking.

It’s important to understand how the leaders of a company operate and how they have faced challenges in the past. If we look at banking and the Bank of New York Mellon in particular, we can see that its history can be traced back to 1784, so it has overcome all the major events that have occurred since then. With some of the biggest names in the business world making up its key institutional investors, this is a company that we would expect to react effectively to changing markets.

Regulatory changes and company results

Just about every industry represented in the financial markets has laws and regulations that govern it. This means that the fear of harsher new laws is an almost constant threat. Meanwhile, the hope that beneficial changes to the regulations help businesses prosper is the other side of this matter that investors keep a close eye on.

Let’s not forget the role played by the profit and loss results produced by major companies. It’s clear that these results have an almost immediate effect on their stock prices. However, we should also bear in mind that this effect can reach other areas of the economy. A surprising set of results for a large business can produce shock waves that travel around the market.

What impact do they cause?

From the wide variety of examples that we’ve looked at here, it’s clear that the impact isn’t going to be the same in every case. While one set of circumstances might snowball and cause a huge impact, another might cause a limited impact before the news disappears as other events overtake it.

Having said that, one of the key issues that they cause is a higher degree of market volatility. We can see how this works by looking at an area such as the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The markets became a lot more volatile as the different aspects of the pandemic became clear. Streaming companies, healthcare companies and video conferencing technology firms made huge profits, while airlines and hotels were among those to lose out massively.

Working out the overall impact of a particular situation is almost impossible to do now. With so many traders looking over the latest news stories and numbers with advanced tools, the original impact can quickly grow or simply disappear. Therefore, the key for investors is to understand emerging trends and react to them before it’s too late.

These details reveal how complex the global financial market is now. It’s a fascinating world, and with more information at our fingertips than ever before, it’s something that anyone can start to research and understand in their own way.