Updated after close of oil and Wall Street
NEW YORK (awp/afp) – Wall Street stiffened on Friday after the close of European markets, panicked by the possible imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which weighed on stocks and took off the bond market.
Earlier, the European indices had continued to fall, as the day before, in order to align themselves with the losses of Wall Street on Thursday. Paris lost 1.27%, Milan 0.82%, Frankfurt 0.42% and London 0.15%.
After European markets closed, a reporter for the US public broadcaster PBS claimed that the US government was convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “decided to invade Ukraine” and had informed the Russian military command of his decision.
The White House denied, through National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who nevertheless indicated that there was a “very real possibility” of a Russian attack.
Indices plunged and US bond rates fell sharply.
“News out of Ukraine and Russia has dealt another blow to markets that were already wobbly,” said Cliff Hodge, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Health. “The flight to safe assets has begun.”
After rising to 2.06%, its highest level since the end of July 2019, the ten-year US government bond rate fell sharply, down to 1.91%, as investors rushed on bonds (prices and rates move in opposite directions).
“If an invasion were to occur,” anticipated John Lynch, chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management, “it is conceivable that stocks could see another decline of around 10%, investors selling first and asking more questions. late.”
Among the rare stocks to float on Friday in New York, oil companies, such as Chevron (+2.04%), ExxonMobil (+2.52%) and Marathon Petroleum (+1.82%), as well as the chemical group Dow ( +0.23%) or the Mosaic mining (+2.07%).
On the downside, red was everywhere, including among the largest caps on Wall Street, from Apple (-2.02%) to Microsoft (-2.43%), via Meta (Facebook), which took over its slide (-3.74%), which began a little over a week ago.
Fever on oil
Unsurprisingly, oil prices soared, with a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in April even hitting $95.66, within reach of the psychological threshold of $100.
It finally ended on a jump of 3.31% to 94.44 dollars, the highest since September 2014.
In New York, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for March delivery rose 3.58% to $93.10, also the highest in more than seven years.
The Yen soars, the euro suffers
Judged as the safest currency by traders, the yen jumped 1.73% against the euro, an exceptional difference for the foreign exchange market.
Also considered a safe haven, the Swiss franc also benefited from this cold snap, but less than the yen, due to Switzerland’s “economic proximity” to the countries involved in the crisis, underlined Juan Manuel Herrera, currency specialist at Scotiabank.
Another safe haven, the dollar also advanced against the euro and stood at 1.1349 dollars, up 0.68%.
Often shunned when risk appetite wanes, cryptocurrencies were sold off massively. Bitcoin lost 3.52% to $42,551.70 and Ethereum 6.21%.
bur-pan-jvi-tu/b