Finance & economics | Buttonwood

Investors ignore world-changing news. Rightly

The Nothing Ever Happens Market

A chart holding a nuke going into it.
Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi
|4 min read

Missile warfare has erupted in the Middle East. On June 13th, as the bombs began to fly, S&P 500 futures fell by 1.6%. But as the hours passed, the stockmarket steadily climbed. The index has now recovered to around 6,000, a hair’s breadth from an all-time high.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The Nothing Ever Happens Market”

From the June 21st 2025 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition
illustration of a map of Africa with a large pixelated cursor pointing at Zambia, which is highlighted in yellow

Want to be a good explorer? Study economics

The battle to reduce risk has shaped centuries of ventures

Illustration of a hand pushing a jagged black arrow upward against a red background. The Jane Street logo appears to be rolling down the arrow in the opposite direction.

Jane Street is chucked out of India. Other firms should be nervous

Around the world, marketmakers now face extra scrutiny


A man looks at an advertisement for the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) displayed at a branch of Nomura Securities Co., a unit of Nomura Holdings Inc., in the Kichijoji area of Tokyo, Japan.

Japan has been hit by investing fever

Will old folk catch the bug?


Don’t invest through the rearview mirror

Markets are supposed to look forward; plenty of investors look back instead

Trump’s trade deals try a creative way to hobble China

To appease the world’s biggest market, countries must anger the world’s biggest trader

The great dealmaker is conspicuously short of trade deals

Donald Trump issues threats—and grants deadline extensions