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• Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer, Solaris Asset Management considers Iran's stance on limiting oil exports to EU as one of the biggest concern for global markets.This has led to a sharp spike in crude oil prices and Ghriskey has expressed caution that unless that situation stabilizes, crude oil and gasoline prices will continue to move higher.
• Q: There has been so much back and forth as far as Greece is concerned, which is a negative. We also have Polson saying that what we are seeing in the Europe will be a prolonged crisis, data points have been mixed. So keeping all this in mind, how are you assessing trade?
• A: We certainly continue to be worried about the developments in Europe. But overall, the US stock market has taken a pretty benign view of the developments in Greece and is focussing more on the steady growth we are seeing out of the core of the euro nations, Germany, in particular, France and northern Europe. So, we are not overly concerned about Europe.  
• We agree with Polson, it will take a while before the entire situation is resolved and there are likely some negative headlines ahead of us. Having said that, the economic data that you quoted that was released this morning was actually quite positive. The utility demand was soft but that is weather related. We had a very warm winter in the US and so the demand for utilities is not as strong as historically it might have been.The manufacturing production growth was very strong in the economic data and was revised upward in December. So we continue to see better economic growth out of the US - slow but steady progress, and to us, it means a tilt towards economically sensitive sectors.
• Q: The stance that Iran has adopted leading to crude prices towards a six-month high, does that concern you? There have been words about a commodity bubble taking place, are those realistic from where we stand at this point and where do you see crude headed now?
• A: That's actually our biggest concern about the markets right now globally and that is what will happen with Iran and whether this will turn into yet another military conflict globally. So we certainly see the reaction of Iran today limiting exports, which is continuing to push crude oil higher here.
• This a concern not only for corporate users, businesses that use energy but also especially for consumers as refining capacities have been taken out in the US due to lack of profits in that business or the volatility of profits in that business. So while gasoline prices are pale in comparison to what a lot of the world pays for gasoline, for petrol has spiked up here and that's a concern in terms of consumer spending.So our concern about Iran is multi-faceted and unless the situation does begin to stabilize, which we thought it was doing for a while but now it seems to be hitting up again. Unless that situation stabilizes, we will continue to see crude oil prices and gasoline prices move higher and that crowding out other purchases on the consumer side and hurting industrial margins. So that's certainly a concern here for us.

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