In reality no Russia‑Ukraine peace deal was signed in 2022: early negotiations in March–April 2022 ultimately failed, and later analyses describe those talks as having collapsed without agreement, with Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba explicitly denying that any March 2022 peace deal was concluded.(en.wikipedia.org) During those talks, global equity markets did in fact rally on peace hopes: on March 29, 2022, European and U.S. stocks rose sharply, with Reuters and others attributing the move to apparent progress in Russia‑Ukraine peace negotiations and Russia’s pledge to scale back operations near Kyiv; the S&P 500 closed that day at 4,631.60 as part of a multi‑day rally.(investing.com) Once it became clear that negotiations were stalling and no deal was forthcoming, markets reversed: the S&P 500, which had peaked around that late‑March level, fell about 9% in April alone and ended April 29 at 4,131.93—below its mid‑March levels, thereby giving back the war‑related rally and more within a few weeks.(statmuse.com) Over the remainder of 2022, global equities declined substantially further, with the MSCI World Index down 17.7% for the year and the S&P 500 finishing 2022 about 19% below its starting level, well under its March peace‑talks highs.(en.wikipedia.org) Given that (a) the relevant branch of the conditional—that the peace process collapses—did occur, and (b) equity markets not only surrendered the prior peace‑talks rally but then declined significantly further in the ensuing months, Friedberg’s conditional prediction about the direction and magnitude of market moves in the “no‑deal” scenario is best judged as having been right.