333. The Friday
The United States bombed Iran on a Friday evening.
This is not, strictly speaking, a new development in the category of things that happen. What is a new development is the timing. Markets close on Friday. They close at a specific time, which is known in advance by everyone who works in them, and also by everyone who has ever checked. They open again on Monday. Between Friday close and Monday open, information can enter the world and marinate undisturbed, like a policy announcement, or a geopolitical event, or a military strike on a sovereign nation.
Jeff Snider is a macro analyst. His professional framework, which he has been developing and writing about for many years, concerns itself primarily with how markets process information. His argument, stated simply, is that markets know things and price them in efficiently, and that the way information enters the system matters as much as the information itself. He has published extensively on this. He has been called both right and early, which is a different thing from right.
His first public reaction to the United States bombing Iran was three words: "Of course it was a Friday night."
(This is not a question. He did not write "of course?" He wrote "of course." He found the timing logical. This is either the posture of a man deeply at peace with how the world works, or the posture of a man who has spent enough time watching the world that surprises are no longer available to him. He wrote three words. The war is presumably still being processed.)
The pattern, if you are looking for one, is not hard to find. Major events tend to land late on Fridays, or on holiday weekends, or in the hours when markets are closed and humans are theoretically doing something else. This has been noted. Whether it represents a strategy — releasing destabilizing information at the moment when markets cannot react to it — or simply a coincidence produced by the number of Fridays in a year, is a matter of interpretation.
Jeff Snider interpreted it instantly. He wrote "of course." He moved on.
The markets were, at press time, closed. They will reopen on Monday. At that point they will begin the process of incorporating the information that a country was bombed on a Friday. The process will take some time. Jeff Snider will watch it happen. He will not be surprised by the process. He has watched it before.
The bombing took place on a Friday. The analysts were watching a different kind of close.