Financial markets are steady at the moment despite geopolitical tensions.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Let's start with financial markets strangely calm so far this morning, given, among other things, continued military action between Israel and Iran.

In early trading, the Dow is up 66 points, a tenth of a percent. The S&P also up a tenth

percent. The NASDAQ is up two-tenths percent, so not a lot but up for the indicators. As the

trading day opens, there's been no sign from the White House whether the U.S. would take the

watershed step of military action against nuclear facilities in Iran. Let's turn to London where we find

Ben Kumar, head of Equity Strategy at Seven Investment Management. Hey, Ben. Hello, how you doing?

You know how they say when it comes to this investment thing? You should stay calm and not react

to every headline. I guess people are doing what we're taught? It does feel like that.

And, you know, I absolutely think most of the time, most news does not need you to go and

mess around with your portfolio.

But of all the things not to react to, this feels like actually one that I would have

expected people to be more concerned about when it comes to Iran and Israel.

I am very surprised to see that markets have been taking it so calmly.

We also have the U.S. Central Bank, considering some of the same factors,

they're expected to brief the media later this afternoon U.S. time.

You're not expecting interest rates to actually move here. No, I don't think so. I suspect what we'll

probably see is the return to the phrase data dependent and acting cautiously. Yes, the oil price has risen a lot in the last

couple of days, but what? Back to a level that we've been at really for the past two or three

years. It's not going to be impacting inflation in the way that we've seen big oil prices move

it in the past. And I don't think it is the Federal Reserve's job to

really play much of a part in geopolitics. It will be interesting to see how they assess the

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