On August 4th, Israel's benchmark TA-35 stock index fell as much as 2.7% on Sunday, the biggest drop in a week. The biggest decline was in dual-listed technology stocks, catching up with last Friday's U.S. stock market slump. Ronen Menachem, chief market economist at Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, attributed the stock market decline to Friday's sharp decline in U.S. stocks and "huge security tensions" in Israel, and he expected the market to continue to be very tense. Menachem said investors are vacillating between two possible scenarios. One is that the current escalation of the conflict continues, damaging Israeli economic activity and spreading to international markets. The other is that Israel's allies put more pressure on it to finally find a ceasefire plan in Gaza. In the latter scenario, the Israeli stock market may return to its upward trend and perform even better than overseas markets. Less than a month ago, the TA-35 index hit an all-time high.