When looking at performance across asset classes since the beginning of the Iran war, what’s becoming increasingly evident is the scarcity of defensive assets. While oil has been a clear winner, with the price up by over 40% since the three-week-plus war between the United States, Israel and Iran began, gold – previously the darling of global markets - has suffered losses of around 14% since late February. Admittedly, the US$ managed to stage a modest rebound, but every other major asset class was down, with emerging market (EM) equities, Euro equities and EM local currency debt sitting at the bottom of that leaderboard. Duration in bonds – a measure of their price sensitivity to interest rate changes, expressed in years - has not done well either, with both the U.S. Treasury (UST) and the Bund index – which track German government bonds - down by around 2% due to upside pressure on government bond yields. Given that we’re facing a highly volatile [trading] environment, fuelled by extreme levels of geopolitical uncertainty, Benoit Anne, a senior managing director at MFS Investment Management, reminds the market that a sharp reversal of the recent moves cannot be ruled out. “At this juncture, the oil price has