Can anyone remember a period quite like this?
Since the end of the Second World War, we have lived through no shortage of crises.
There was the Cold War, during which the world spent decades staring into the abyss of nuclear confrontation.
There were regional wars that reshaped entire continents.
There were conflicts between technologically advanced military powers.
There were wars of attrition in which hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of lives were consumed.
History has hardly been peaceful.
But I struggle to remember another period in which so many major crises have converged at the same time.
Europe is now witnessing its largest war since 1945, one that has dragged on for years while steadily degrading the industrial capacity of one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon producers.
The Middle East remains in a state of profound instability, with sustained conflict in and around Israel continuing to threaten an already volatile region.
One of the world’s most strategically important maritime choke points has repeatedly faced disruption, reminding everyone how dependent global trade remains on a handful of narrow sea lanes.
Relations between the world’s leading powers have deteriorated to levels that would have seemed almost unimaginable only a decade ago. Diplomatic friction increasingly spills into military posturing, economic confrontation and occasional direct clashes between competing interests.
Meanwhile, Taiwan remains one of the most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints on the planet, with the possibility of a major confrontation never far from strategic calculations.
As though that were not enough, inflation has returned to economies that had almost convinced themselves it belonged to history.
Government debt has reached levels that would once have been regarded as extraordinary.
Many developed economies now carry fiscal burdens that future generations will spend decades attempting to manage.
The international trading system, once the unquestioned engine of global prosperity, is showing visible signs of fragmentation as supply chains become politicised and economic blocs increasingly pursue strategic independence rather than efficiency.
And hanging over all of it is the growing fear that the global economy may be approaching another major downturn, one whose consequences could extend well beyond an ordinary recession.
That is an extraordinary catalogue of stress.
I honestly cannot remember anything comparable.
Neither can my mother, who was born during the final years of the Second World War.
Which brings me to the truly remarkable part.
Oil.
Historically, oil has been among the first markets to react when geopolitical risk begins to accumulate. It has often served as a remarkably sensitive barometer of global anxiety.
Yet today, despite this astonishing convergence of military, political and economic instability, crude prices remain remarkably subdued.
Well below the levels many would instinctively expect.
And that is before we even begin adjusting for inflation, which would make today’s prices appear even less remarkable in historical terms.
That disconnect should make us curious.
Either the market is correctly identifying forces that outweigh all these apparent risks, or the risks themselves are not yet being reflected in prices in ways history would normally suggest.
Both possibilities are fascinating.
Neither is particularly comforting.
Markets can remain surprisingly calm.
Until they are not.
Sometimes they absorb shocks with remarkable resilience.
Sometimes they ignore them for far longer than anyone believes possible.
And occasionally they wake up all at once.
Whether today’s calm reflects genuine strength or merely extraordinary complacency is one of the most important economic questions of our time.
Because if reality eventually catches up with the long list of pressures now building beneath the surface, the adjustment may be remembered not for its speed alone, but for its scale.
History has a habit of reminding us that periods of apparent calm are not always signs of stability.
Sometimes they are simply the silence before the market finally notices what has been happening all along.