Markets continued to grapple with the economic and corporate earnings implications relating to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “We have a ton of uncertainty right now,” said Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower Advisors. “We’re dealing with a war, we’re dealing with inflation. We don’t know what it means to earnings.” The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had carried out a similar exercise in 2017 in a matter related to circulation of messages through WhatsApp. Overall, extreme levels of fear in the market seems to have morphed into something more resembling concern. For example, the Cboe Volatility Index fell from its 2022 peak of 36, which it hit Monday, to around 30 on Friday, a sign of easing tensions. Meanwhile, while the price of WTI crude oil slipped from Sunday’s multiyear high $130 of barrel to $109 a pop. Markets have been expecting heavy restrictions on Russian oil, some of which the U.S. has already imposed, and that would reduce the global supply and bring about even more burdensome inflation. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy." Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts.
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