With more than 500 journalists, equipped with the latest technology, "embedded" with US and British troops and a few dozen holed up in Baghdad, the war has provided round-the-clock coverage for armchair viewers and nervous traders alike.

The rapid rise of all-news television channels such as CNN, BBC World and Sky News, which have been competing fiercely for viewers, has reduced dealers' dependency on newswire services for the latest battlefield reports.

And while cost-cutting by financial firms has forced many dealers to rely on just one financial information provider, the relatively low cost of subscribing to news channels means that most dealing rooms are now peppered with TV screens.

"On our trading floor we've got seven television screens, all of them either with Sky News, CNN, CNBC, the BBC or any news broadcasting corporation," said Kamal Sharma, a forex analyst at Commerzbank.

"We now have dedicated news channels that can get us up to date with the latest news."

The media coverage of the current conflict contrasts with the strict controls imposed by the US military in the 1991 Gulf War when only small pools of US reporters were placed with front-line units.

This time, the early images of allied tanks rolling through southern Iraq unimpeded and the US "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad sent shares on Wall Street skyrocketing to their best weekly performance in 20 years.

But when the reporting from the Gulf later began to highlight a string of setbacks suffered by the coalition troops and question the pace of their advance, markets quickly went into reverse.

"The news which came out of Iraq during the first week of the conflict was almost universally good for the Anglo-American forces," recalls Jim Wood-Smith, head analyst at Gerrard Stockbrokers.

"Over the course of the first weekend, it appeared that most of what was reported during the previous week was in fact false and that all the cities and towns we'd been told had fallen in fact hadn't.

"When you have no idea what the information that's going to be given to you is, or whether it's true or not, it makes for a slightly uneasy time," he said.

How dealers view the coalition forces' progress in the war may even depend on what time of the day they tune into the coverage, according to Commerzbank analysts.

They have detected a pattern under which the dollar and British pound -- seen as the most exposed of the major currencies to the risks of the war -- tend to advance in the Asian session before falling back in European and US trade.

"Anyone watching CNN, CNBC, BBC World and the others in the Asia time zone might believe that victory was assured," the analysts wrote.

"A night-time blitz on Baghdad makes impressive TV coverage and reinforces the notion of US military might. The US dollar and British pound both rally.

"By the light of morning, however, and as European traders read newspapers which are generally more objective than the 'embedded' reports from Iraq, so the mood turns much more negative, pushing both currencies lower," they added.

But after almost two weeks of non-stop coverage of the war, dealers are more cautious about so-called breaking news stories flashing up on TV screens.

"I think there's a bit of war weariness on the part of markets," said Sharma.

"There's a couple of news headlines that the market would definitely react to and that's the unconditional surrender of Iraq, the fate of Saddam Hussein and the allies declaring victory -- those are the ones that matter now," he added.

SPACE.WIRE