Wall Street, like its European counterparts, is set to open lower on Wednesday morning, as investors remain risk-averse in the face of mounting political tensions in the Middle East.

Around half an hour before the start of trading, futures were down between 0.1% and 0.2%, heralding a red start to the session.

Investors had so far managed to keep a cool head in the face of events in the Middle East since last weekend, preferring to focus on economic issues.

But they are likely to be more cautious today as the escalation between Israel and Iran moved up a notch last night after Teheran fired nearly two hundred ballistic missiles.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has often been synonymous with periods of high market volatility", recalls Mark Haefele, Chief Investment Officer of UBS's wealth management arm.

"But our baseline scenario is for the confrontation to stop before turning into an all-out war between Israel and Iran, which would be likely to involve their respective allies", he moderates.

In the face of rising geopolitical risk, however, investors prefer to retreat from risky assets and fall back on the safest stocks.

This upsurge in tension in the Middle East is contributing particularly to the rise in oil prices, with a barrel of US light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) climbing by almost 3% to trade at around 61.7 dollars.

Gold seems to be taking slightly less advantage of its safe-haven status, falling by 1.7% to $2671.7, and remaining below the psychological barrier of $2700 an ounce.

On the government bond front, the yield on 10-year Treasuries has climbed back to 3.80%, once again illustrating a lesser "search for quality", while the dollar continues to rebound against the euro, which has fallen back towards 1.1160.

Worries about a conflagration in the Middle East were compounded by disappointing results from Nike, which last night reported a sharp drop in quarterly earnings, forecast sales down 8% to 10% for the current quarter and withdrew its annual targets.

Against a backdrop of market uncertainty about the direction the Federal Reserve will take at its November meeting, investors also closely followed the ADP survey figures published this morning.

The survey showed that the private sector created 143,000 jobs in September, a figure that exceeded expectations, since economists were expecting an average of 125,000.000 job creations.

But it is above all the official employment figures, expected on Friday, which are likely to reignite the debate on the possibility of rate cuts greater than the two 25 basis point cuts currently planned by the central bank between now and the end of the year.

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