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In general, the stock market is heavy during the turbulent two weeks for humanity.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 600 points on Wednesday at the time of writing. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are approaching 2% gains. All three major indices are well off the lows affected by the close of trade on February 23, just hours before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Each member of FAANG [Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet] the cohort has increased in the last five trading days, as has luck, with a nearly 7% increase in Alphabet.

And believe us, there are many things that are trying hard to put the main stock indexes on their knees.

Oil prices reached $ 110 a barrel on Wednesday as the war between Russia and Ukraine intensified. Western company after Western company tells Russia to see you later in the light of its actions. One of the last names is the credit card giant American Express.

These actions by the West have led some Wall Street strategists to tell Yahoo Finance Live that the Russian economy is ready to plunge into a deep, protracted recession.

Meanwhile, leading investors in emerging markets such as Mark Mobius tell us that Russia may be non-investment for more than a year, and investing in other emerging markets such as China and Brazil is not without increased risk.

And as oil prices rise – and this could be considered a jump (leading to a potential super jump, as Goldman Sachs chief strategist Jeff Curry explained to us) – gas prices in America continue to rise, rise and rise more. The average price of gasoline in California is approaching $ 5 per gallon, the highest price in the country.

The additional gas inflation that will flow out of consumers’ pockets is real. This is money that can be spent at Macy’s for a new pair of jeans. This is extra money that will cost FedEx to send a package due to higher fuel costs. And what is FedEx likely to do about it? Raise prices even further on consumers’ broken wallets.

The story continues

Despite many problems – which could naturally hit corporate profits in 2022 – the stock market is difficult. Why is that, you ask? I’m glad you asked.

Market professionals say investors are looking beyond the chaos in the headlines and remain focused on factors that tend to upset stock prices.

Higher interest rates than the Federal Reserve. Strange things, right?

“One of the reasons the stock market is doing so well is the belief that the Fed will not be as aggressive in its new tightening policy as some thought it would be before the Eastern European crisis erupted. So, if we get a little bit of positive reinforcement on this issue, the stock market could hold back (or even bounce back) for a while, “said Miller Tobacco’s chief market strategist Matt Mali.

Mail is on par here, judging by the positive reaction in stock prices to the new comment of Fed chief Jerome Powell in his testimony to lawmakers today.

“The bottom line is that we will continue, but we will continue to be careful as we learn more about the consequences of the war in Ukraine,” Powell told the House Financial Services Commission.

Fed’s Yahoo Finance correspondent Brian Chung said Powell said he supported raising short-term interest rates by 0.25 percent at the next policy meeting on March 15 and 16.

In early March, most market experts were preparing to raise interest rates by 50 at the March meeting, followed by another eight to 10 rate hikes at the end of the year. But Powell has officially reset the story, and investors like it.

So, here it is, people.

Inflation is going on indefinitely. Profit margins are under attack. Vladimir Putin is playing terror in front of the world. Still, there are markets focused on comments on raising interest rates from one of Powell’s most influential people in the financial industry.

No one said investing made sense. It doesn’t make sense now, and it hardly makes sense tomorrow. Be assured, however, that at some point markets will soon move beyond fears of rising interest rates and shift to geopolitical and macroeconomic risks.

When this happens, the aforementioned low levels of shares on February 23 may be in play. You have been warned.

Brian Sosie is the editor – in – chief and a leader in Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and so on LinkedIn.

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Russia’s oil and gas giants, listed on the London Stock Exchange, have seen their stock plummet after Putin invaded Ukraine last week.

Since last Thursday, when Russia invaded Ukraine, shares of Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil and Surgutneftegaz have collapsed in the London market, losing up to $ 190 billion of their total market capitalization, or 95 percent, according to estimates by Saxo Group and Bloomberg. shared by Saxo Bank Commodity Strategy Manager Ole Hansen.

Companies could also see the collapse of their market capitalization in Moscow if the Moscow Stock Exchange was opened. However, after SWIFT sanctions imposed on Russian banks over the weekend, the Russian ruble collapsed on Monday, ordinary Russians lined up in front of banks and ATMs to withdraw cash, the central bank doubled the key interest rate to 20 percent to avoid a complete collapse of the economy, and the Moscow Stock Exchange said it would not open at all this week.

Russia’s oil and gas reserves in London were also shattered by an avalanche of reports from international major companies that cut ties with Russian oil and gas companies, withdrew from projects and halted investment in Russia.

BP said this weekend that it would abandon its 20 percent stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft and likely receive $ 25 billion from the move. BP is also reported to have canceled all its fuel oil loads from a Russian Black Sea port due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this week.

Shell said it intends to leave its joint ventures with Gazprom and related parties, including its participation in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. ExxonMobil, the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project, is beginning the process of terminating operations and developing steps to exit the Sakhalin-1 plant, the US superintendent said on Wednesday. Equinor of Norway has also decided to start the process of leaving its Russian joint ventures.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine and soaring oil prices, investors have focused on interest rates. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who appeared before the House Financial Services Committee, said he would propose a four-percent increase in interest rates at a central bank meeting in two weeks. This eased Wall Street fears that the central bank would raise interest rates by half a percentage point.

Yields on benchmark 10-year treasury bonds rose to 1.865% from 1.708% on Tuesday. Bond yields and prices are moving in opposite directions.

Shares have been volatile in recent days as investors have followed an escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as domestic news on the economy and inflation.

Investors are reacting to rapidly evolving events on the battlefield, a barrage of Western sanctions against Moscow and large companies that are severing ties with Russia. Rising energy prices have added to the uncertainty over the likely path of US interest rates this year.

If S&P keeps its profit, it will mark its sixth move of more than 1% – in both directions – in the last seven sessions, said Frank Capelleri, CEO of the brokerage company Instinet. These moves are a reflection of a fragile market, he said.

“We haven’t seen big moves like the one in two years,” he said, referring to the first days of the pandemic.

Following the Russian invasion, major US indexes were relatively stable, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rising 1.9%. However, rising oil prices threaten to unleash more volatility in the markets, and stocks are still in general decline since last year, said Mr Capelleri.

Moreover, some of the current market trends, such as oil driving other assets or rising interest rates, have not been observed for years or decades, he noted. “Very few investors have survived an environment with rising interest rates,” he said.

Rising oil prices are a headache for central banks, which have been dealing with the fastest inflation rates in decades.

Energy markets continued their rapid development on Wednesday. Crude oil prices in the United States rose above $ 110 a barrel for the first time since 2014, as refineries refused to buy Russian oil, taking a bite out of global energy supplies. US crude traded at $ 112.10 and recently rose 7.4% to $ 111.09.

“The impact effects [across markets] are highly dependent on how high oil prices are, ”said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at Oanda. “If oil prices start to reach $ 120, we will start seeing a lot more talk about the global economic consequences of these sanctions.

The energy sector performed best in the session. Exxon Mobil rose 2.5 percent, Chevron rose 3.4 percent and ConocoPhillips rose 2.6 percent. Overseas, BP PLC rose 4.8% and TotalEnergies rose 8.2%.

Energy companies will benefit from higher energy prices, even when working to break away from Russia. Exxon said this week that it would suspend operations on a multibillion-dollar oil and gas project in Russia and make no more investments in the country. BP said on Sunday it would leave its nearly 20% stake in government-controlled Russian oil producer Rosneft.

The financial sector was the second best sector of the day, growing nearly 3% and wiping out about half of its losses earlier in the week. Berkshire Hathaway rose 2.6 percent, JPMorgan won 2.2 percent, Bank of America rose 1.9 percent and Wells Fargo rose 4.5 percent.

Among other corporate names, Nordstrom’s shares jumped 38% after the retailer forecast higher-than-expected earnings this year. Hewlett Packard Enterprise raised its earnings forecast for the year by raising shares by 11%.

In Europe, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 grew by 1.2%. In Russia, trading in stocks and derivatives closed for a third day this week. The Russian ruble fell 0.7% against the dollar to 111.25 per US dollar, from 83 on Friday.

Prices have jumped into other pockets in the energy market tied to Russia. Natural gas prices in Europe jumped 37%. So far, there has been a minimal disruption to Ukraine’s pipeline system, through which about a third of Russian gas exports to Europe pass, analysts say.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its Russian-led allies agreed on Wednesday to increase their total production by another 400,000 barrels a day in April, as agreed last year. This came after the United States and other major oil-consuming countries said they would release 60 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves.

The International Energy Agency said it wanted to send a “united and strong message to global oil markets that there will be no supply shortages as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

In the cryptocurrency market, bitcoin is trading at about $ 43,662, according to CoinDesk, a drop of 0.3%. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked demand for cryptocurrencies in both countries, which has helped raise the price of bitcoin.

Shares in Asia have largely fallen. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.7 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ended down 1.8 percent. South Korean Kopsi, by contrast, added 0.2%.

Write to Paul Vinya at [email protected], Joe Wallace at [email protected] and Caitlin McCabe at [email protected]

The Bluesky project will eventually allow the creation of new curation algorithms that will show various tweets at the top of users’ timelines from Twitter’s own algorithm. This will give users more choice about the types of content they see, Mr Dorsey said, and could allow Twitter to interact with other social media services.

Bluesky grabbed the attention of many technologists who were already working on decentralization. A small group of them will soon meet with Mr Agraval and Mr Dorsey on Sunday to discuss the project, according to two participants who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings, while others exchanged ideas in an online chat. room.

Some Bluesky contributors have suggested an app that has appeared on all of their social media shows. Others wanted custom algorithms that could prevent them, for example, from seeing spoilers for their favorite TV show. And some have focused on making their online identities portable so that the account can be moved between social media companies the way a phone number can be moved from AT&T to Verizon.

“One of the things Bluesky would offer is a curating and filtering experience that is independent of that offered by social media owners,” said Tim Bray, a pioneer in Internet software and a former vice president at Amazon who is involved in some of the discussions.

Jay Graber, a cryptocurrency developer, was elected in August to lead Bluesky. And in February, Ms. Graber announced that the project was officially registered as a public benefit corporation and was building a prototype.

The project attracted the attention of Reddit engineers, who held preliminary discussions with engineers on Twitter about how their sites could one day interact, said two people familiar with the talks, but the companies did not formally agree on plans to work together.

Some skeptics believe that Twitter is jumping into the web3, joining the modern movement in technology to redirect many services, including social media, to so-called blockchain technology. But executives say Twitter is taking care of what a huge number of users want, while following Mr Dorsey’s decentralization mandate before stepping down as CEO in November.

FRANKFURT / LONDON, March 2 – Shares of European banks halted on Wednesday after falling to their lowest level in nearly 11 months due to the effects of the crisis in Ukraine, which forced Russia’s European subsidiary Sberbank. MM) close.

Russia has shown no intention of halting its attack on Ukraine, which has sparked heavy sanctions against Moscow and led to the eviction of large companies from the Russian market. Read more

US President Joe Biden has warned Vladimir Putin that the Russian leader “has no idea what’s next.” Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.” Read more

Sberbank’s European branch, Russia’s largest lender, was closed by order of the European Central Bank. Read more

Regulators are also preparing for the possible closure of the European branch of Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB Bank (VTBR.MM), amid growing concerns about the impact of the sanctions, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Read more .

Sberbank, which reported record profits in 2021, said it was leaving the European market as its subsidiaries there faced large cash flows and threats to the safety of employees and property. Read more

Sberbank operates in Austria, Croatia, Germany and Hungary, among others, and has European assets worth 13 billion euros ($ 14.41 billion) on December 31, 2020.

Sberbank’s depository receipts in London have fallen 99.9% so far in 2022. “Not all sellers have buyers,” a London retailer said on Wednesday.

The impact of the crisis and sanctions are expected to have consequences for European banks.

“The quality of the assets of major Western European banks will be under pressure from the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” the credit rating agency Fitch said on Wednesday.

“Banks also face significantly increased operational risk,” he added.

The index of shares of leading European banks (.SX7P) rose 0.1% by noon on Wednesday, erasing early losses, which peaked at 5.6% on Tuesday and 4.5% on Monday. Earlier on Wednesday, the index reached its lowest level since April 2021, down 27% from last month’s highs.

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBIV.VI), which operated in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years ago, was one of the biggest to fall this week.

The bank is considering leaving Russia, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that it would be the first European bank to do so since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Read more

Shares of Raiffeisen, which are half lower than a month ago, fell 4.7%.

Some financial officials are trying to calm the markets.

The capital position of Hungary’s OTP Bank, Central Europe’s largest independent lender, is excellent and the bank can withstand additional possible market turmoil in Russia and Ukraine, the Hungarian central bank said in an email to Reuters. Read more

DISPOSAL OF ASSETS

German market regulator BaFin is closely following Russia’s European division, VTB Bank (VTBR.MM), which no longer accepts new customers. The Frankfurt-based bank had 8.1 billion euros in assets at the end of 2020.

On Tuesday, Russia said it was imposing temporary restrictions on foreigners seeking to leave Russian assets as it sought to halt investor withdrawals led by crippling Western sanctions.

But investors continue to lose assets. Aviva’s fund management business (AV.L) will give up its small exposure to Russia “as soon as we can,” CEO Amanda Blanc said on Wednesday.

Financial companies are struggling to keep up with the situation.

Dubai’s Mashreqbank (MASB.DU) has stopped lending to Russian banks and is reviewing its existing exposure to the country, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Read more

The move is one of the first reported cases of a bank in the Middle East breaking off ties with Russia and highlighting growing global nervousness over violating Western sanctions.

The French BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) said it was working to maintain its operations as much as possible in its Ukrainian branch, Ukrsibbank, which has nearly 5,000 employees.

A working group at Germany’s Commerzbank, which has a subsidiary in Russia, meets several times a day, a board member said.

Aki Hussein, chief executive of Hiscox (HSX.L), said insurer Lloyd’s of London provides coverage for international business in Ukraine.

“We have insured these offices and some of the people there and worked closely with our clients for the last eight weeks and effectively – as much as they want – we are helping them leave the country and evacuate their staff.”

(1 dollar = 0.9022 euros)

Additional reports by Gergely Szakacs, Zuzanna Szymanska, Saeed Azhar and Yousef Saba Edited by Paul Carrel, Tomasz Janowski and Jane Merriman

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