Welcome to this week’s rundown of international events and the impact on your portfolio. There is still some time to go on my cease-fire prediction from last week, so let’s focus on some other topics that we’re talking about right now.

Elections in Indonesia and Pakistan

Two of the largest muslim countries in the world, Indonesia and Pakistan, held elections over the past weeks and while neither are key elections for global markets, they’re still important to keep an eye of. The Pakistani election was marred by accusations of voting fraud and irregularities by the imprisoned left-wing PTI leader Imran Khan. In a spectacular AI-generated speech, he claimed victory based on the party’s own exit polls and even in the official tally, PTI was the largest party. Everyone expected Nawaz Sharif and his PML party to take the Prime Minister’s office, mainly due to their strong support from the military, but they gained surprisingly few votes and now Nawaz’ brother Shehbaz Sharif looks like the most likely Prime Minister. Sharif will deliver stability in Pakistan’s international relations whereas Imran Khan might have reignited his anti-American campaign from his time in office, so for the US and the West, the result is quite positive although the ensuing demonstrations and riots points to an overall skepticism towards the election results and great divisions within Pakistan.

In Indonesia, the right-wing nationalist Prabowo Subianto won the election as expected. He is also the preferred candidate of the military, who still wields enormous power in Indonesia. Despite being leaders of opposite parties, Prabowo will likely continue former President Joko Widodo’s policy of non-alignment and co-operation with both China and the US. Indonesia is a huge country with immense geopolitical potential, so everyone basically wants to placate and influence Prabowo. His election and power transition was significantly smoother than that of Sharif in Pakistan, which bodes well for the overall stability of South-East Asia.

At the end of the day, the military dictates how much dissent and unrest in the streets is allowed and for now it seems like the respective militaries are fully aligned behind Sharif and Prabowo. This should allow for some long-term investment and political planning in both Pakistan and Indonesia with the elections out of the way and the geopolitical course for both countries now set for the coming years.

Ukraine funding

The US Congress is still struggling to