“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”

However you associate the part of February just gone — Lunar new year, Presidents' Day, or just plain half term holiday — it often marks a change of gears, after which financial markets properly pick up the pace.

In recent years, however, it has also been when unusual events out of left field have wreaked havoc on the best laid plans of mice and money managers. In 2020 it was about now that everyone finally woke up to the Covid-19 threat emanating out of China, and in 2022 this was when Russia did the seemingly unthinkable by invading Ukraine.

In 2024, having one's ear to the ground for distant rumblings is an absolute must. There are so many potential flash points for exogenous market disruption that something big is likely to happen soon.

Knowing how and where it will cascade is another matter. The US political trail is in crazy flux, China’s economy is at a sink-or-swim juncture, and Israel’s assault on Gaza has reached a catastrophic tipping point.

That these feel like known risks is reason enough for greater interrogation. But it’s also unnerving how quiet the commentary has been around Russia in recent months. As of this week, that has definitively changed, as I’ll discuss more below.

Before we dust off our copies of War and Peace though, let’s take a temperature check of leveraged finance markets.