At the same time, the smallest problem with war is the biggest for the stock market: you can not count on it.

The stock market is about risk and money and the relationship between them.

But the prerequisite is that you can put numbers on the risk.

It goes without saying that it is impossible when it comes to the Ukraine issue and the threat of war.

Major financial consequences

Of course, war is primarily a matter of human suffering and physical devastation.

But the financial consequences will also be very great.

Now the financial markets are following every step of the development in the world political crisis tightly.

When the Stockholm Stock Exchange opened this morning, it was the US "there will be a war on Wednesday" message that applied.

The stock market crashed more than 4 percent, before announcing that Putin might continue talks with the West.

Then the case was mitigated immediately.

Whether Putin invades Ukraine or not, what it would trigger for counter-reactions and what the consequences would be economic, for example in Europe, is, as I said, impossible to count.

But there are some hard numbers and facts:

The EU gets 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

The gas price increased sevenfold between May and December last year.

The EU has long been dependent on natural gas from Russia.

And since the gas is transported in pipes, it is difficult to simply replace the Russian gas with gas from other parts of the world.

The gas a powerful weapon

The gas crane to Europe is thus a very powerful weapon in Putin's hands if the West introduces economic sanctions against, for example, Russia's banking system.

Russia is the world's second largest oil producer, after the United States but before Saudi Arabia (2020).

Soon the oil price will be up to 100 dollars per barrel, which is bad for countries without oil production but good for Russia, for example.

Oil exports bring in three times as much money as gas exports.

Oil and gas mean that Russia has a disproportionately large influence over the world economy in relation to its size - GDP is only two and a half times larger than Sweden's, and only a tenth of the United States' or China's.

In the short term, the threat of war and the world's and above all Europe's concerns about oil and gas supplies are ringing in Russia's coffers in the form of rising oil and gas prices.

But in the long run, it's devastating.

On the one hand, the whole world strives to get away from oil, and also the more climate-friendly but still not fossil-free gas.

A troubled Russia means a risk of energy chaos and is thus a strong incentive to increase at that rate.

Power and influence

On the one hand, Russia needs to build a more developed economy in other sectors.

It requires foreign investment and confidence from abroad, which may not feel obvious if you simultaneously mobilize your military and threaten to invade Europe.

Putin's current strategy therefore seems poor, on the verge of incomprehensible, as far as one can count after all.

Perhaps the answer is that money is not even in the equation, but that it is about other aspects of power and influence.

The contrast is total against the other factor that has guided stock market developments recently: interest rates.

There is great uncertainty about inflation, but this does not prevent the financial markets from calculating the risk to the millimeter and confidently - in the form of forward prices - set the future Riksbank interest rate at 1.5 per cent, when the Governor himself says 0.2 per cent.

While Vladimir Putin, unlike Stefan Ingves, is totally impossible to count on.

Which in turn makes the stock market prone to either not care at all, or fall free.