Osama bin Laden: The markets react

Osama bin Laden lived here.

The mission was to kill him, with the job falling to the elite "Seal Team Six" (ST6).

World reactions to his death so far range from hearty congratulations, to caution, to guarded optimism.

So with all these military, political and psychological implications unfolding worldwide, how did global investors take to the announcement of Bin Laden's demise?

“News of the death of Osama bin Laden has had a limited impact on regional asset prices,” analysts at Royal Bank of Canada dryly summed up in a note on Monday, published in the New York Times.

Both gold and oil prices fell slightly, and stock markets worldwide were mostly higher:

• Euro zone blue chip indicator, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, rose 0.3 percent
• The Paris CAC 40 climbed 0.39 percent
• the DAX in Frankfurt added 0.74 percent
• London's markets were closed for a bank holiday
• Japan's Nikkei gained 1.6 percent, closing above 10,000 for the first time since the Mar. 11 earthquake

Some analysts, however, cautioned the killing could lead to more instability on global oil and commodity markets.

“The immediate consequences are, as we are seeing, a positive repricing of the U.S and its markets, and a slight derating of commodities,” Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London told Bloomberg.

“Beyond this immediate reaction, markets need to be careful as bin Laden has possibly not been the single biggest security threat directly for many years, and those who will regard him as a martyr won’t give up as a result of his killing.”