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Cailianshe News, August 13 (Editor: Shi Zhengcheng)Around 11:20 p.m. Beijing time on Monday, the three major U.S. stock indexes currently in trading all plunged, and then slowly recovered.

Among them, the Nasdaq turned from a straight decline after a rise of about 0.8%, and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average also experienced similar situations.

Judging from the time period of the incident, there may be several reasons for the inexplicable plunge in the US stock market during this period, among which the most likely factor affecting the mood of (some people) is still the situation in the Middle East. Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that some unlucky person made a wrong order that caused the market to drop by 1%, or that some large investors took advantage of the Monday opening rally to sell quickly.

Around the time when the U.S. stock market plunged, a report from Fox News in the United States attracted market attention, sayingJust as Western countries have been issuing warnings to Iran one after another, people familiar with the matter said that Iran may attack Israel within 24 hours.

It is worth noting that Fox News released this news at around 21:00 on Monday evening Beijing time. However, a series of well-known financial terminals did not capture and spread this information until after 23:00, which can also partially explain why the US stock market suddenly plunged at such a time.

(Source: Fox official account)

In that report, Fox Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst said,Regional sources told him they feared Iran and its proxies would attack Israel within 24 hours in response to the assassination of former Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning Beijing time, the Wall Street Journal also quoted "people familiar with the matter" as saying:The Israel Defense Forces placed its troops on high alert for the first time this month as it observed that Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah were preparing for attacks.But the person familiar with the matter also said Israel did not know whether an attack was really imminent.

Although there has been much speculation in the market about Iran's next move in recent days, the joint statement on the Middle East issued by the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday has further heated up the tension. In the statement, French President Macron, German Chancellor Scholz and British Prime Minister Starmer called on Iran and its allies not to launch attacks that would further increase regional tensions and jeopardize ceasefire negotiations. No country or nation will benefit from further escalation of the situation in the Middle East.

(Joint statement of the three countries, source: official website of the French presidential palace)

In addition to the news from Iran, there were several other developments worth paying attention to after 23:00 Beijing time.

US presidential candidate Donald Trump returned to social media platform X at 23:19 and posted a campaign video.At 8:00 this morning Beijing time, he will also accept a live interview with Musk, the boss of X platform.Given that his series of policy proposals are considered to be unfavorable to the new energy industry, so if the US stock market falls tomorrow, it is indeed possible to blame him, but today it is a bit far-fetched.

(Source: X)

Also at 23:00,The New York Federal Reserve released its latest consumer survey report for July, the most notable point of which was that three-year inflation expectations fell 0.6% month-on-month to 2.3%, which is also the lowest level since the survey began in 2013.

Although the above data seems to be very conducive to rate cuts, in fact, US consumers' expectations for 1-year and 5-year inflation remain unchanged at 3% and 2.8%. At the same time, consumers' inflation expectations for healthcare, college education and rental costs have increased, which is not good news for Federal Reserve officials who pay close attention to housing costs.