Israel Financial News

Has economic forecasting ever seemed so fraught with risk? A mix of almost imponderable new possibilities made possible by AI and the unpredictable state of the world makes people who trade contracts on so-called prediction markets seem foolhardy. Still, spare a kind thought for those of us in the commentariat who must hedge our prophesying.Put aside for a moment how long the truce between the US, Israel and Iran will last. And, if it does, how to estimate the huge backlog of ships and tankers waiting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz and how long this will take to clear.

As the US-Iran war enters a fragile two-week ceasefire, with no clear endgame in sight, one may well ask how and why the world has reached this situation. Wars are rarely accidents.At their core, they are bets, and can hence be viewed through the lens of risk—not in a vague rhetorical sense, but by means of rigorous psychological analysis of the kind that forms part of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Prospect Theory, particularly its four-fold pattern of risk attitudes.This framework maps human behaviour into four quadrants based on whether an outcome involves gains or losses and whether its probability is high or low.

. Some dusted off old camping stoves and refilled oil canisters. “When the pain becomes deep enough, the fear fades,” a 42-year-old Iranian woman said, citing five weeks of war and years of repression and economic crisis in the country.Less than 30 minutes after Trump’s post, Iranian officials told Egypt that Tehran had cut off direct communications with U.S. negotiators, according to officials from an Arab government.

For at least a decade, developing countries across Asia and Africa have worried about growing dependent on the People’s Republic of China. They’re concerned about debt traps, coercive policies and hidden costs that might push their economies toward crisis.Crisis has come, and that logic has been turned on its head. After six weeks of the US and Israel’s war on Iran and its ensuing counter-attacks, it is the countries that bet on Chinese supply chains that are faring better than the ones that had trusted Pax Americana.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd stock has fallen by about 10% to ₹1,376 since the West Asia conflict began on 27 February. The fall would have been steeper if not for the company’s business updates highlighting that it had clocked 11% year-on-year growth in cargo volumes to 46 million tonnes (MT) in March.

Effects of the global disruptions resulting from America and Israel’s war on Iran have started to show on India’s economy. On Monday, the final HSBC India services purchasing managers’ index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, showed a fall to 57.5 in March from 58.1 in February, marking the slowest rate of expansion in 14 months. This follows a bigger fall in the manufacturing PMI to 53.9 in March from 56.9, the lowest level in nearly four years.Relatively speaking, the services sector has done better.

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NEW DELHI: Oil prices have been on the boil since the war between the US, Israel and Iran broke out on 28 February. To ease supply concerns and prices of over $100 per barrel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies including Russia, together known as OPEC+, agreed to increase production in May.

An old commodity-trade adage is that the Middle East “sells hydrocarbons to buy carbohydrates.” The desert states send out their oil and natural gas, and in comes wheat and rice. There are a few things produced in the Gulf, however, that are crucial to global food production: nitrogen fertilizer such as urea and ammonia, and the gas used to make them.So the war in Iran—and its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz waterway—has prompted warnings about another bout of global food inflation similar to the one that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite such fears, the agricultural market isn’t at risk today, at least in the short term.

NITI Aayog, nearly 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress, while industrial water demand is expected to double by 2030. Despite this, only 30–35% of wastewater generated in urban India is currently treated, and an even smaller fraction is reused.According to Le Guennec, encouraging industries to transition from freshwater dependence to treated wastewater could significantly ease pressure on freshwater resources.

The US-Israel attack on Iran has profound implications for the long-term stability of the West Asian region, global geopolitics, energy security and global economics. The expanding nature of the conflict is spawning a long list of collateral damages, amplifying vulnerabilities wherever they exist.

On 31 March, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened that it would target 18, mostly American, technology companies in retaliation to US-Israeli attacks on Iran. It declared that “since the main element in designing and tracking terror targets are American [Information and Communications Technology] and [artificial intelligence or AI] companies... the main institutions effective in terrorist operations [against Iran] will be our legitimate targets.” Employees were warned to vacate their workplaces and residents living within a kilometre’s radius of their premises were told to evacuate to safety.On Iran’s target list were Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE and Boeing.

₹800 crore handicrafts industry is seeing orders stall, cash get locked up and livelihoods fray—exposing its deep reliance on export markets.In Eidgah’s Narwara locality, Pashmina weaver Rauf Ahmad Qureshi, 54, keeps one eye on his loom and the other on television updates from the Gulf, where demand for his work is shaped. “We get work through traders, so any crisis impacts us quickly,” he told Mint. “An artisan lives hand to mouth.

On April Fools’ Day, the American president addressed the nation and the world to send not one message about the war that the US and Israel launched against Iran a month ago, but all possible messages at once.The conflict is “nearing completion,” Donald Trump said, before repeating that the US might also escalate by hitting Iran’s power plants if there’s “no deal.” The US is “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he asserted, before claiming that “we never said ‘regime change’” while simultaneously musing that the regime, which remains ensconced, sort of has changed, since American and Israeli forces have killed so many leaders.Again he claimed that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, even though evidence is accumulating that the Iranians had safely moved their enriched uranium to other locations before those strikes. Trump knows this too, since he has been considering ordering ground troops to try to seize that fissile material, while fearing the quagmire such a mission could end in.“We have all the cards, they have none,” the president boasted.

The financial and economic implications of the US-Israeli war with Iran will depend on the war’s duration. The longer it goes on, the longer we can expect oil, gas, fertilizer, helium and other prices to remain elevated.

Mumbai/Bengaluru: Fast-food chains serving dosas and momos to pizzas across India have found out that switching away from cooking gas amid the ongoing supply squeeze is difficult. The piped gas network is confined to a few cities, and the transition to electric cooking is hampered by higher operating costs and a spike in upfront equipment prices.“Over the past three weeks, we have made conscious efforts to reduce our dependency on gas by increasing the adoption of electric equipment across locations,” said Ankur Sharma, co-founder of Rebel Foods, which operates cloud-kitchen brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani and Oven Story Pizza.“In some areas, we continue to face constraints due to limited availability of equipment from vendor partners,” he said.

Best stocks to buy today (All buy trades are rates of equity, and sell rates are based on F&O)Indusind Bank Ltd: Sell below 750 | Stop 790 | Target 685 (Multiday)IPCA Laboratories Ltd: Buy above ₹1,610 | Stop ₹1,540 | Target ₹1,785 (Multiday)On 30 March 2026, Indian equity markets witnessed heavy selling pressure for the second consecutive session as surging crude oil prices above $114 a barrel and escalating tensions in the Middle East dampened investor sentiment. The NSE benchmark Nifty closed sharply lower by 488.20 points, or 2.14%, at 22,331.40, marking its weakest finish in nearly eleven months.

New Delhi: Farmer lobbies have raised concerns about the strict implementation of curbs on the sale of diesel in portable containers amid the West Asia war, citing increased usage to operate agricultural equipment during the upcoming harvest season in April.Farmers say the ban on loose fuel sales—introduced to curb illegal storage and misuse—has heightened uncertainty over whether adequate supplies will be available during the peak season, particularly in rural areas where access to fuel stations remains limited.The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, Kirti Kisan Union, and Sanyukt Kisan Morcha, and farmers across northern states such as Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh are now planning to raise the issue with authorities to seek to ease supply."Any disruption in harvesting will not only impact crop quality but also delay procurement, affecting overall farm incomes,” said Bhanu Pratap Singh, a farmer based in Uttar Pradesh. With the wheat harvest window being narrow and weather-sensitive, stakeholders warn that ensuring an uninterrupted diesel supply will be crucial to avoid operational bottlenecks and safeguard output in the country’s key grain-producing regions.Demand for diesel for harvesters and tractors surges as farmers begin to reap wheat around 10 April.

For foreign investors backing Indian equities, the financial year 2026 was one they would rather forget. It was a period dotted with global disruptions, starting with US-led tariff uncertainties and ending amid the US-Israel-Iran war.

Amid the US-Israel war with Iran, concerns are growing about the safety of subsea cables in West Asia—the hidden network that carries most of the world’s internet. A large part of India’s data travels through these cables, many of which pass through regions now at risk of conflict.

Vietnam War. It was 8 June 1972. Dozens of children were running for safety after the US bombing in Vietnam’s Trang Bang region.