Wall Street falls on Russia sanctions; ASX set to rise

Markets quivered amid worries about how high oil prices will go and how badly the global economy will get hit after the US and allies upped the financial pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Stocks swung down and then up, investors herded into bonds in search of safety and the value of the Russian rouble plunged to a record low.

The S&P 500 was 1.4 per cent lower in late afternoon trading after Western allies moved over the weekend to block some Russian banks from a key global payments system. The US Treasury Department also announced new and powerful sanctions against Russia’s central bank.

The Dow Jones has shed 1.3 per cent and the Nasdaq is 0.6 per cent lower. The Australian sharemarket is set to add to Monday’s gains, with futures at 6.45am AEDT pointing to a rise of 12 points, or 0.2 per cent, at the open.

The Biden administration said Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, European Union and others will join the US in hitting Russia’s central bank, which said the Moscow stock exchange would remain closed Monday.

Stocks on Wall Street trimmed their losses through the morning, at one point flipping to modest gains, after big tech stocks and others that benefit most from low interest rates rallied. The war in Ukraine is raising expectations that the Federal Reserve may have to take it more slowly in its campaign to raise interest rates in order to fight inflation.

Other markets were showing more fear about the rising antagonism between Russia and the U.S. and its allies.

Oil prices on both sides of the Atlantic climbed more than 4 per cent amid concerns about what will happen to crude supplies, because Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers. That’s upping the pressure on the already high inflation squeezing households around the world.

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In search of safer returns, investors jumped into US government bonds, which drove the yield of the 10-year Treasury down about 0.10 percentage points to 1.87 per cent, on pace for one of its sharpest drops since the omicron coronavirus variant first rattled investors. Gold rose 0.5 per cent.

They’re just the latest sharp swings for markets, which were relaxing in relief just on Friday, in part on thoughts that sanctions against Russia weren’t as severe as they could have been. More sharp turns are likely in the hours and days ahead given all the uncertainty about the war.

“Right now the situation is fluid and investors are looking for the next shoe to drop,” said Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel.

European stocks broadly have fallen more sharply than their US counterparts given how much more closely tied Europe’s economy is to Russia and Ukraine. Germany’s DAX dropped 0.7 per cent, France’s CAC 40 fell 1.4 per cent and the FTSE 100 in London lost 0.4 per cent.

Markets had already been on edge before Russia’s invasion, worried about upcoming hikes in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, which would be the first since 2018.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to testify before Congress later this week, where he could offer clues on the path for interest rates. A report on Friday will also show whether strength in the U.S. jobs market continued in February, which would give the Fed more leeway to raise rates.

The Fed is caught on a narrow tightrope, needing to raise rates enough to stamp out high inflation but not by so much as to choke the economy into a recession. Higher rates also put downward pressure on all kinds of investments from stocks to cryptocurrencies.

Given the uncertainty surrounding Ukraine, investors have sharply pared back bets the Fed will raise rates in March by double the usual increase. Traders are now forecasting just a 10.4 per cent chance of that, according to CME Group. A day earlier, they were pricing in a 24 per cent probability.

“Expectations are that central banks are going to take a somewhat slower and more cautious approach as a result of this crisis, so that provides a positive offset for risky assets,” Jonas Golterman, senior global markets economist at Capital Economics, said in an online briefing Monday.

That helped high-growth tech stocks and others that soared in recent years in large part due to low interest rates. A healthy gain for Tesla, up 6.8 per cent, was the biggest reason the S&P 500 was able to pare its losses so sharply on Monday, though big tech stocks like Nvidia were swinging from losses to gains and back again. .

Tesla also benefited from the higher oil prices, as did other electric-vehicle makers, solar-power companies and producers of oil. Energy stocks in the S&P 500 jumped 1.6 per cent for the biggest gain by far in the index.

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Defence-related companies also gained, with Lockheed Martin up 4.3 per cent.

Financial analysts say wars and other such scary geopolitical events tend to have only a temporary effect on markets, perhaps lasting weeks or months. But in the moment, fear is nevertheless still higher.

Putin’s order that Russian nuclear weapons stand at increased readiness to launch ratcheted up tensions with Europe and the United States and revived dormant fears from the Cold War era.

The Russian central bank raised its key rate to 20 per cent from 9.5 per cent in a desperate attempt to shore up the plummeting rouble and prevent a run on banks. The Russian currency plunged at one point plunged below 0.9 cents before climbing back to a shade above a penny, though still down nearly 15 per cent.

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The rouble had plunged more than 30 per cent after the move to block Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system. Among other things, the sanctions are meant to crimp the Russian central bank’s access to over $US600 billion ($827 billion) in reserves and hinder its ability to support the rouble.

AP

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