US stocks climbed and oil prices dropped Wednesday, extending a volatile spell as investors track the economic fallout of the war in Ukraine.
The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, while the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index added 2.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 590 points, gold 1.8%. All three indexes are poised to break a four-session losing streak.
Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 jumped 3.5%. Russia’s stock market remained closed, though its currency trading was open. In the offshore market, the ruble edged slightly lower in volatile trading to around 128 rubles to the dollar. Pricing of Russia’s currency has been choppy since the country imposed measures to stem its selloff, and Western banks have shunned Russian assets.
Brent-crude futures, the international benchmark, declined 5.3% to $121.01 a barrel, reversing gains from earlier in the session. The US has banned imports of Russian oil and gas, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree banning exports of unspecified commodities and raw materials.
President Biden announced Tuesday a ban on Russian oil imports into the US, amid growing calls from bipartisan lawmakers to take action. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In early New York trading, travel stocks rallied, while energy shares declined. Cruise lines Carnival and Royal Caribbean added 7.9% and 6.4%, respectively. American Airlines Group and United Airlines Holdings added 5.8% and 8.8%, respectively. In contrast, Occidental Petroleum fell 2.8%, Halliburton declined 5.1% and Marathon Oil fell 5.2%.
In Europe, London-listed shares of Polymetal International,
a Russian precious-metals company, surged 60%. Shares of banks also jumped. Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International,
which made roughly a third of its pretax profit in Russia last year, gained 15%. Societe Generale,
which also has exposure to Russia, jumped 11%. UK-based budget airline easyJet jumped 14%.
The jump in equity markets spurred investors to pull back from haven assets Wednesday. The ICE US Dollar index, which tracks the currency against a basket of others, lost 0.9%, pulling back after a winning streak that pushed the greenback to its highest level in nearly two years. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes edged up to 1.913% from 1.870% Tuesday. Yields and bond prices move in opposite directions.
Gold prices, another asset that investors perceive as safer, lost 2.4%. Trading in the nickel market was suspended for another day, following violent moves Tuesday that sent the metal surging to briefly top the $100,000-a-ton mark for the first time.
“It seems like markets are taking a breather today,” said Viraj Patel, global macro strategist at Vanda Research. “I don’t think…a lot of investors are thinking that we’re in a new regime and that the worst is over—I think it’s more of a dead-cat bounce and profit-taking [on safe havens] than the start of a new reversal.”
The war in Ukraine has fueled big moves in stocks, commodities, currencies and bonds. For investors, analyzing the direction of the conflict, fast-changing Western sanctions on Russia and their effects on the global economy is challenging. The turbulence has sent stock indexes spiraling, erasing much of the gains of the last year. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite, which has entered a bear market, closed Tuesday at levels last seen roughly a year ago.
A trader the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Photo:
Courtney Crow/Associated Press
A surge in oil prices, given new momentum by the US embargo on Russian energy, has raised concerns that sustained inflation and lower economic growth could collide. Major central banks were on track to begin tightening monetary policy before Russia invaded Ukraine. The European Central Bank is meeting Thursday. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that he planned to propose a quarter percentage-point rate increase at the central bank’s meeting this month.
In the cryptocurrency market, bitcoin mounted a comeback after its recent slide, rising about 9.6% from its 5 pm ET closing price to trade around $42,224. On Wednesday, President Biden will sign an executive order instructing agencies across the federal government to consider the creation of a US digital currency.
In Asia, stocks largely fell, tracking Wall Street’s Tuesday session. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.3%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.7%. The Shanghai Composite dropped 1.1%.
—Caitlin Ostroff contributed to this article.
Write to Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com and Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com
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