LONDON - Below are five charts showing the volatile response of global financial markets to this week's war between Israel and Hamas.MSCI's main world stocks index has reacted to the conflict by notching up its best week in almost two months.
That has come as officials at the world's most influential central banks such as the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have made comments hinting that their relentless run of interest rate hikes may be wrapping up. Brent oil has shoot up over 5%, its biggest weekly jump since April , while European gas prices have seen a near 40% surge, the largest weekly leap of the year so far.
Its more than 3% drop marks its biggest weekly fall since February when concerns about rule of law changes were still raw. But this week's decline has also come as the country's central bank put $30 billion of its reserves on the line to support the shekel.Another clear sign of stress in Israel's markets has been a huge spike in the cost of insuring its government debt using what are known as credit default swaps .