US stock market shrugs off weak economic data

THIS week, the US stock market will most likely continue to bounce around near record highs as traders try to ascertain if the recent wave of weak data is bad enough to prompt a pause in "tapering".

All bets will be off, however, if internal upheaval in the Ukraine metastasises into an international conflict. Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president of the former Soviet state, was ousted last week. But his supporters in the ethnically Russian Crimean peninsula are militating against the new government in Kiev with the apparent support of Russian troops.

On Friday, President Barack Obama said he was deeply concerned by reports that Russia is intervening in the Crimea, warning "there will be costs" if it continues. The last time a major conventional army marched into a neighbouring nation was Saddam Hussein's incursion in Kuwait, which sparked decades of conflict.