Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon said he’s been surprised by the “benign” reaction in financial markets to the Iran war, adding that it will take weeks to understand more about the situation.
“It’s very hard to speculate because there is so much that is unknown at this point,” Solomon said at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney on Wednesday morning. Investors are considering whether this will become a more prolonged event and start to impact consumption, he said.
US assurances on securing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have helped steady nerves in markets. Still, the Iran war has reverberated across the region, with Israel bombarding Tehran in a fresh wave of strikes. The Islamic Republic fired missiles at Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, with Doha saying targets weren’t limited to military interests.
“I look at the market reaction and I’m actually surprised,” Solomon said. “The market reaction has been benign.”
Iran war impact on stock market
The S&P 500 index of US stocks fell less than 1% across Monday and Tuesday, partly reflecting its exposure to large technology shares that have held their ground.
Since Solomon spoke, some moves have extended, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slumping as much as 4.5% and South Korea’s Kospi plunging more than 12%. India’s rupee weakened to a record low on fears that higher energy prices will stoke inflation. US Treasuries have fallen this week amid inflation concerns, reducing expectations for interest-rate cuts. The dollar has strengthened, after a prolonged run of weakness.
Solomon said that he wasn’t surprised to see the VIX Index and other volatility measures climb. “It’s going to take a couple of weeks for markets to really digest the implications,” he said.
Crude oil and Strait of Hormuz
Much of the market response centres on oil prices, and whether crude can move unobstructed through the Strait of Hormuz. Brent rose above $82 a barrel on Wednesday after rallying about 12% over two days, the biggest gain since 2020.
Solomon also addressed the tumult in the $1.8 trillion private credit market, saying that while there have been a “handful” of idiosyncratic issues, that doesn’t mean the overall credit quality is a worry.
“If you actually look at the underlying credit performance in a lot of these portfolios, up to this point you haven’t seen a broad deterioration,” he said.
He said the US economy is holding up well, which is making it hard to identify areas where credit risk might be excessive.
“When we do have a credit cycle, or we do have a slowdown, or we do have a recession, you will have more visibility on some of these places where lending standards have weakened.”
