LONDON/NEW YORK/SINGAPORE, March 30 — The war in Iran has sparked chaos across financial markets, leaving some investors and market makers reluctant to take on risk, making trading harder and costlier — a scenario regulators are watching closely.
Investors and traders said that none of the world's biggest markets, from United States (US) Treasuries, to gold, to currencies, have been spared. In Europe, hedge funds, which now dominate bond trading, added to those dynamics by rapidly unwinding a number of bets this month.
Investors say they have at times struggled to get prices or execute trades over the past four weeks, as market makers fear being stuck with large positions that could quickly become unprofitable.
"When we try to trade, it takes longer to trade. (The market makers) want us to be more patient, cut the trades into smaller sizes.
"What that has as a consequence is that everybody's reduced the size of their positions," said GAMA Asset Management's chief investment officer Rajeev De Mello, adding that gaps had widened between the price at which market makers would buy an asset and at which they would sell it.
Various measures of volatility have soared to levels seen in previous market crises, including those for stocks, bonds, oil, and gold.
Cracks have emerged even in the usually deep and liquid government bond markets, a cornerstone of global finance, which have been hit hard as inflation risks spook investors.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley stated that the difference between bid and ask prices on newly issued two-year US Treasuries, a key measure of market depth and transaction cost for the most widely traded securities, has widened roughly 27 per cent in March, compared with February levels, suggesting that dealers are charging a higher premium to take on risk.
Pain in futures market
To be sure, the latest symptoms of market stress are not uncommon during bouts of market turmoil, such as during US President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs in April 2025 and the 2020 COVID pandemic.
But this round of volatility has arrived at a time when markets had been in an expansive mood, as investors rode a runaway rally across asset classes, suggesting a deeper correction may materialise if the war drags on and liquidity evaporates.
In Europe, the pain has been particularly stark in the futures market for short-term interest rates, where traders rapidly priced steep central bank rate hikes.
Morgan Stanley's co-head of EMEA rates Daniel Aksan said that liquidity became "severely diminished" at one point, operating at 10 per cent of usual levels.
"The (illiquidity, price moves) reminded me of the COVID days," he said.
On Friday, three European financial regulators said that ongoing geopolitical tensions, namely the war in the Middle East, pose significant risks to the global financial landscape through higher energy prices, potential inflationary pressures, and weaker economic growth.
They reiterated their warning about volatility's impact on liquidity and the risk of sudden price swings.
Protecting bottom lines
Trading has thus far remained orderly, but buyers are becoming increasingly scarce as investors rush to de-risk and move into cash, leaving dealers hesitant in turn.
"Firms have lost so much money; whether it is sell-side or buy-side, that liquidity is suffering because you do not have the players," said broker-dealer Mischler Financial's global rates trading managing director Tom di Galoma, referring to the US Treasury market.
While trading volumes in Treasuries have surged, analysts say some of these trades have been done out of necessity, not by choice.
"With a wider bid-ask spread, it is more expensive to put on a trade and would be less attractive for people to enter into trades, but the fact that you still see really high volumes suggests that some of these trades were unwinds, or stop-outs," said Morgan Stanley's US rates strategist Eli Carter.
Hedge funds in Europe
The particularly sharp selloff in European bonds has also served as an example of the impact hedge funds may have on that market at times of stress, a risk the Bank of England (BOE), in particular, has flagged as its footprint has grown rapidly in recent years.
According to the latest Tradeweb data from 2025, hedge funds now account for over 50 per cent of trading volume in the United Kingdom and euro zone government bond markets.
While their presence in the bond markets provides liquidity in good times, many had piled into the same trades, some of which quickly proved loss-making.
Three hedge fund investment sources said hedge funds took steep losses by betting on a BOE rate cut.
Similarly, Credit Agricole's head of European government bond trading Bruno Benchimol said that they also took hits on trades that bet on steeper European yield curves and on trades that assumed the gap between Italian and German bond yields would stay narrow.
He added that as they all unwound similar positions at the same time, that pushed bond dealers to widen bid-ask spreads.
Morgan Stanley's Aksan said that when hedge funds all de-risk at the same time, "it exacerbates volatility". At other times, they took positions that helped dampen volatility.
Staying in the market
But market makers still have pressure to win business even as clients reduce the frequency and size of trades.
Nomura senior FX options trader Sagar Sambrani said pricing for larger-ticket orders had widened relative to normal market conditions to account for market risk. But, "counter-intuitively, the pricing on smaller tickets is tighter than in regular conditions as market makers strive harder to capture the reducing client flows".
But sometimes this is not possible.
In the gold market, which is highly sensitive to interest rates, global arbitrage fund Aravali Asset Management's chief investment officer Mukesh Dave, said there were days when market makers were absent altogether, indicating an unwillingness to transact.
The price of normally safe-haven gold plunged this month after a record rally in 2025.
"They do not want to make money at the moment; they do not want to lose money by being in the market. If given a choice, they do not want to be in the market," he said.
