A man wearing a protective mask, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, walks past an electronic board displaying Russian Trading System (RTS) Index, Japan's Nikkei index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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HONG KONG, March 1 (Reuters) - Markets paused for breath on Tuesday, after days of volatility with Asian shares edging up and gold slipping slightly as investors watched the conflict in Ukraine unfold, and weighed its economic implications, notably regarding energy prices.
Global share markets have tumbled in recent days following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and western allies' ramping up of sanctions including cutting off some of Russia's banks from the SWIFT financial network and limiting Moscow's ability to deploy its $630 billion foreign reserves.
High-level talks between Kyiv and Moscow last night ended with no agreement except to keep talking, but Asian markets stablised on signs of no immediate escalation of sanctions.
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MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) gained 0.5%, while Japan's Nikkei (.N225) jumped 1.5% in early trading.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index (.AXJO) rose 1.38%, boosted by financial and tech stocks ahead of a central bank policy meeting, and Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) rose 0.5%.
"A lot of what's been happening in markets is obviously overshadowed by the news around Ukraine and Russia in terms of negotiations, but the significant drivers are going to be the response from governments and central banks in terms of the policy settings," said Kerry Craig, Sydney-based global market strategist at J.P.Morgan Asset Management.
"The markets are going to focus on the broader implications of what's going to happen around energy prices, what that means for inflation across parts of the world," he said.
Brent crude futures, on Tuesday rose 0.63% to $98.59 per barrel The benchmark touched a seven-year high of $105.79 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began last week, though markets calmed as the United States and allies discuss a coordinated release of crude stocks in a bid to mitigate any disruption of oil and gas supplies from Russia.
Currency markets were also fairly quiet on Tuesday, with the euro back at around $1.12 after tumbling as low as $1.11210 at one point on Monday.
Russia's rouble steadied after plunging as much as 30% to a record 120 per dollar after Western countries and their allies slapped Russia with new sanctions, but following action by Russia's central bank it last traded at 102 per dollar.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields were at 1.8629% gradually walking back a little ground from Monday's tumble.
Spot gold was 0.3% lower at $1,902 an ounce, having risen as high as 1,973.96 last week.
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Reporting by Selena Li; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
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In November, GuiYing Ma, 61, was sweeping the sidewalk of an empty property in Jackson Heights when a man allegedly struck her in the head repeatedly with a large rock, injuring her face and head, police said at the time.
A day after the attack, the New York Police Department arrested a 33-year-old man in connection with the crime. That man was later identified as Elisaul Perez.
Perez faces three felony charges, including a charge of assault with intent to disfigure and dismember and a charge of assault with intent to seriously injure someone with a weapon. He also faces a charge of criminal possession of a weapon.
Perez is scheduled to appear in court on April 12 for another hearing. Queens Law Associates' Attorney David Strachan, who represents Perez, declined to comment.
GuiYing Ma in the hospital with her husband Zhanxin Gao.
Yihung Hsieh, the owner of the Jackson Heights property, set up a GoFundMe page to help cover Ma's medical expenses from the attack. He told CNN Ma had to have surgery to relieve pressure on her brain.
Ma died at 9:29 p.m. on February 22 at NYC Health & Hospitals/Elmhurst due to complications from blunt impact head injury, Hsieh said in a post on the GoFundMe.
"The attack permanently damaged the right side of Mrs. Ma's brain. But the love between Mrs. Ma and her husband Mr. Zhanxin Gao remained," a statement on the GoFundMe page read.
In early February -- about 10 weeks after the attack -- Ma woke up from her coma, the GoFundMe said. She was "able to raise her hand in response to Mr. Gao even though she could not speak still."
When she woke up, Ma was able to move her right arm and right leg, CNN affiliate WABC reported.
The NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force was investigating the crime in November. CNN has reached out to the NYPD Monday for the latest on that investigation.
The NYPD created an Asian Hate Crime Task Force after an increase in attacks on Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Between March 19, 2020, and September 30, 2021, 10,370 hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander people across the nation were reported to Stop Hate AAPI, a center that tracks reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans.
CNN's Kiely Westhoff and Laura Studley contributed to this report.
GLOBAL - World markets were set for another tumultuous week after Western nations announced a harsh set of sanctions to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and as fighting intensified for a fourth day.
The Russian invasion comes at a time when investors are already worried about expensive market valuations and hawkish central banks with world stocks (.MIWO00000PUS) falling to a 10-month low on Thursday and down more than 7% so far this year.
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NEW YORK - The Dow on Friday registered its biggest daily percentage gain since November 2020 with the market rebounding for a second day from the sharp selloff leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 834.92 points, or 2.51%, to 34,058.75, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 95.95 points, or 2.24%, to 4,384.65 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 221.04 points, or 1.64%, to 13,694.62.
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LONDON - Europe's main stocks index roared back on Friday, lifting off nine-month lows with banks leading a broad-based rally as investors hunted for bargains following a bruising sell-off after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The STOXX 600 ended the day up 3.3%, after dropping to May lows on Thursday. All major indices jumped more than 3%, with London's FTSE 100 (.FTSE) up almost 4%.
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TOKYO - Japanese shares snapped a five-session losing streak on Friday, with heavyweight technology stocks leading the charge, as the market tracked a sharp rebound on Wall Street overnight.
The Nikkei share average (.N225) ended 1.95% higher at 26,476.50, but lost 2.3% for the week. The broader Topix (.TOPX) climbed 1% to 1,876,24, but posted a 2.5% weekly loss.
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SHANGHAI - Chinese stock indexes rose on Friday as buying by foreign investors boosted healthcare, new energy and consumer staples firms, a day after the blue-chip index recorded its biggest drop in a month sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Shanghai Composite index (.SSEC) finished the day up 0.63% at 3,451.41 points.
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AUSTRALIA - Australian shares are expected to open significantly higher on Monday tracking a strong rebound in Wall Street indices on Friday, as investors are likely to have taken respite in major economies imposing various sanctions on Russia and considering freezing its financial assets.
The local share price index futures rose 2.4%, a 120.2-point premium to the underlying S&P/ASX 200 index (.AXJO) close. The benchmark rose 0.1% on Friday..
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SEOUL - South Korean shares closed 1% higher on Friday, bouncing back from a one-month low hit in the previous session, although the benchmark index marked its worst week in four on Russia-Ukraine jitters.
The KOSPI (.KS11) closed up 27.96 points, or 1.06%, at 2,676.76, after declining 2.60% to the lowest level since Jan. 28 on Thursday.
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FOREIGN EXCHANGE
NEW YORK - The U.S. dollar dipped on Friday, giving back some of the strong gains from the previous day, as investors gauged the latest round of sanctions on Russia and U.S. inflation data was seen as unlikely to make the Federal Reserve overly aggressive at its next policy meeting.
The dollar index fell 0.459%, with the euro up 0.59% to $1.1257. The euro fell to $1.105 on Thursday, its weakest against the greenback since June 1, 2020.
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SHANGHAI - Sustained demand continued to support the Chinese yuan on Friday, putting it on course for the third straight weekly gain, despite Russia's invasion of Ukraine roiling global financial markets.
The spot yuan opened at 6.3230 per dollar and was changing hands at 6.3172 at midday, 127 pips firmer than the previous late session close.
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AUSTRALIA - The Australian and New Zealand dollars were holding their ground on Friday as the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused major mood swings in markets, but also boosted prices for resources Australia is rich in.
The Aussie had steadied at $0.7179 , having bounced from an overnight low of $0.7095, but remained short of a five-week peak of $0.7284 touched on Wednesday. That left it almost unchanged for week.
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SEOUL - The won and the benchmark bond yield rose on Friday.
The won ended at 1,201.6 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.07% higher. For the week, the currency weakened 0.47%.
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TREASURIES
NEW YORK - U.S. Treasury yields eased from earlier highs on Friday after the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge rose more than expected in January, but the market's reaction was muted as uncertainty reigned due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Before the data's release, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note was 3 basis points higher at 2.002%, the first time the benchmark was above 2% since last week. The 10-year's yield was last down 0.5 basis points at 1.967%.
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LONDON - Euro zone bond yields rose on Friday, tracking moves in U.S. Treasuries after falling sharply the previous day as the Russian invasion of Ukraine boosted demand for safe-haven assets.
Germany's 10-year government bond yield, the benchmark of the bloc, jumped more than 5 basis points to 0.22%. It closed at 0.226% on Wednesday before the news of the Russian attack. DE10YT=RR
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TOKYO - Japanese government bond yields jumped on Friday as demand for safe-haven debt cooled with investors weighing the potential economic fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, the 10-year JGB yield rose two basis points to 0.205% and the 20-year JGB yield jumped 3.5 basis points to 0.685%.
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COMMODITIES
GOLD
Gold prices reversed course to slide 1% on Friday, and palladium also slipped, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered sharp swings in the precious metals market.
Spot gold slipped 0.9% to $1,887.05 per ounce by 02:02 p.m. ET (1902 GMT), swinging between gains and losses through the session.
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IRON ORE
Chinese ferrous futures tumbled on Friday with all products logging losses on the week as coal prices slumped in afternoon trade after the government ordered a cap on benchmark prices of it.
The most-traded coking coal futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell as much as 8.8% to 2,400 yuan ($380.19) a tonne and ended at 2,512 yuan per tonne. They were down 1.8% this week.
Benchmark iron ore futures closed down 3.1% to 681 yuan a tonne on Friday and logged the fourth straight weekly decline.
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BASE METALS
Aluminium prices retreated on Friday from record levels on easing fears about power supply after Russia's energy sector was excluded from Western sanctions and as some traders withdrew ahead of the weekend.
Three-month aluminium on the London Metal Exchange slipped 0.9% to $3,364 a tonne by 1730 GMT, easing off a record high of $3,480 touched on Thursday. On a weekly basis, prices are up about 3%.
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OIL
Oil prices slipped Friday after sharp rises early in the session on concern over potential global supply disruptions from sanctions on major crude exporter Russia.
The April Brent crude futures contract fell $1.15, or 1.2%, to settle at $97.93 a barrel, after climbing as high as $101.99. The more active May contract shed $1.30, or 1.4%, to $94.12.
A decision by Western allies on Saturday to block certain Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system is likely to lift oil prices well above $100 a barrel as risks with trading Russian oil spike, analysts say.
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PALM OIL
Malaysian palm oil futures plunged 7% on Friday, but posted their best week since October on strong demand and as Russia's attack on Ukraine stoked worries about global edible oil supplies.
The benchmark palm oil contract for May delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed down 469 ringgit, or 7.3%, to 5,984 ringgit ($1,425.27) a tonne, a day after it hit a record high.
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RUBBER
Japan's rubber futures inched higher on Friday and posted their fourth straight weekly jump, as Asian stocks rose and oil prices extended sharp gains after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Osaka Exchange rubber contract for August delivery , finished 2.3 yen, or 0.9%, higher at 261.3 yen ($2.27) per kg. It posted a 1.4% gain for the week.
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As is obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in demographics, cities are becoming denser—much denser. Rural life continues its steady emptying-out as urban life accelerates its explosive filling-in. The tilt has been apparent at least since the middle of the last century when the French geographer Jean Gottmann invented the word “megalopolis” to describe the continuous urbanization from Boston to Washington, D.C., then containing one-fifth of the United States’ population. But nowhere has the shift from countryside to city been more dramatic than in present-day Asia. The rise of Asian cities has been meteoric, in ways catastrophic, in ways exquisite, and in every instance bigger, denser, and taller than their western counterparts. This reality is the subject of a new book (published by the A+D Museum and Harvard South Asia Institute) and exhibition (on view at the Helms Design Center in Culver City through March 12), both titled deCoding Asian Urbanism.
Little more than a decade from now, two-thirds of the world’s largest cities will be in Asia, at least four of them with populations exceeding 30 million.
Gottman’s term, coined 61 years ago, is now somehow too spare to embrace what is underway in places like Dhaka, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, Mumbai, Seoul, Shenzhen, and Bangalore, to name a few modern mega-cities. The Philippines alone has three of the most densely populated cities in the world, topped by Manila, where 107,000 people are crammed into each of its 17 square miles. Our language lags behind the reality: At the current pace, for instance, 90 new cities will be born in Asia, each larger than San Jose, California (population around 1 million in 2019). A little more than a decade from now, two-thirds of the world’s largest cities will be in Asia, at least four of them with populations exceeding 30 million.
The deCodingAsian Urbanism exhibition is a sequence of discrete rooms, beginning with a world map depicting relative city densities, and ending with a scrolling video display of bar graphs showing the growth of cities over time, from 1500 to 2100—a devastating flash of numbers that summarize the rise and fall of empires and the concomitant rise and fall of cities. Between these two data sets, one is immersed in moving images of intensive street life in Asia, filmed and edited into flowing kaleidoscopes by artist and filmmaker Miriam Kuhlmann, maps of Asian cities at the birth of colonialism (tiny) and today (enormous), photos of glistening prosperity side-by-side with grinding poverty, and the architectural propositions that embrace all of this dramatic change.
By far the most arresting illustration in either the book or the exhibition is a composite assembled by Columbia sociologist and globalization expert Saskia Sassen. Consuming the foreground is a shantytown made of thousands of rusted, corrugated boxes, slammed together as if by a typhoon. Occupying the background, as if painted onto the horizon, is a skyscraper oasis, as distant as a cruise ship and equally impervious to the vicissitudes of weather or market forces. Sassen’s trompe l’oeil is so compelling because it is so easy to believe. We know that this is somewhere—if not now, sometime in the near future.
The burgeoning Asian megalopolis confronts a paradox that, increasingly, afflicts older, Western cities whose roots in the pre-automotive age, though frayed, still offer, in Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “a space of human appearance.” The demands of hyper-capitalism and global corporate wealth dictate a new urban form, designed essentially as landing pads for an international elite. Farooq Ameen, deCoding’s editor, curator, and founding principle at City Design Studio, notes that they feature “airports, hotels, malls, business parks and factories, gated skyscraper ‘communities’ and office towers, dotted with virtuoso architecture” as the marker for arriviste economies controlled largely by totalitarian governments. The images of such places are projected worldwide, in glossy shots on magazine covers, in news accounts, and on architect’s webpages.
Against this placelessness is pitted the vitality of the vernacular, the dynamism of the dispossessed, whose lives are built around historical memory, cultural avowal, the immediacy of personal encounter. This counter-reality is played out, all too frequently, in the lower depths. In the shadow of global capital’s imposture glamour—and in no way glamorous—are the informal “cities,” like Mumbai’s Dharavi, thought to be Asia’s largest slum.
Life here is constructed of personal relationships, lineage, trust, and relentless poverty. Nevertheless, an ingrained, natural civic enterprise persists, percolating from the streets up, and out. Qingyun Ma, former dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, says in one of several dialogues contained in the book: “Life seems to be able to reorganize itself in a very nimble, flexible way and…activities that happen around any physical construct are never programmed.” So, spaces are simply claimed, usually illegally. Eat a bowl of noodles on the sidewalk in Beijing, occupy Panthapath street in Dhaka for Friday midday prayers, take over every nook and cranny of the sky walkways in Hong Kong on “maids day off.”
A belt of freeways wraps a section of Shangha. IMAGE COURTESY ISPYFRIEND
The assumptions of western cities are tossed out. The idea of an ordered, and orderly, choreography of public and private space is nonexistent. In some fundamental way, you either live in a western construct, imposed from outside, or you live in Asia, where a sidewalk cannot be designed for walking, as it might be in Paris, because that’s where someone sleeps every night.
There are no easy answers to reform—literally—what the Indian architect Charles Correa noted 30 years ago was “a brutal mismatch between the form of our cities and the way we use them.” Yet, refashioning Asian cities is a more urgent task than ever before if they—and many other developing cities, some lodged within the so-called First World—are to become something more than models of the dislocation imposed by the exportation of wealth from the periphery to the centers of finance capital.
This work, says Ameen, requires “urban acupuncture,” a more nuanced, bottom-up approach to building and planning. “Cities…must rely on specific, smaller-scale interventions within the urban fabric that impact the larger context of the city,” he writes.
Examples highlighted in both the book and exhibition include Diana Balmori’s Public Administration Town (PAT) in Sejong City, Korea, and Hamzah & Yeang’s Solaris Tower in Singapore; projects that use landscape to relieve the stress of the built urban environment. Where PAT embeds all of the city’s ministry buildings into nature by creating a continuous linear rooftop park, Solaris conserves a remnant of nature in Singapore’s central city by shaping the building around the original plot. Architecture also has the power to help stem the flow of migrants from the countryside to the city, Ameen argues. Kashef Chowdhury’s Friendship Hospital, in Satkhira, Bangladesh—one of the country’s poorest places—inverts the formula, introducing the urban into the rural. The hospital is made up of small spaces, courtyards, and little piazzas. The architecture has minimal impact on the landscape yet, with luck, provides a village with a small offering of betterment and stability. “I ask myself whether the children are better off in their village because of the amenities offered by this project? Or is this person better off as someone who is moving to the city…into a future of uncertain employment and housing?” Chowdhury wonders.
For Ameen, such projects apply Buckminster Fuller’s principle of adjusting an airplane’s “trim tabs,” which allow a huge airship like a 747 to turn around. The architectural and urban tweaks, he believes, will reshape entire cities.
One hopes. These, like so many other architectural schemes, rely on governmental goodwill or buckets of private money. The real question is, can a few important and essential fragments spark a groundswell for spatial democracy or will they coax us into a languorous sentimentality for well-intentioned one-offs? In the balance, it should be clear, is the fate of all our cities, inside and outside of Asia.
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An Asian artist was attacked on his way to perform at the opening night of a Lower Manhattan play — just blocks from where Christina Yuna Lee was killed in her apartment two weeks ago, the theater said.
The artist has his glasses broken, suffered bruises to his eyes and “was kicked multiple times,” leaving him unable to perform his role for the opening of “The Chinese Lady,” the theater said. He instead played one of the instruments during the show.
“We are sharing this because the attack on this Asian American artist, which happened near Seward Park not far from where Christina Yuna Lee was tragically murdered, is another incident in a long history of violence against Asian Americans,” the statement reads.
The artist was kicked multiple times and was unable to perform his role in the play.Christopher Sadowski
“This violence and the hatred that fuels it remain disgusting and heartbreaking and have created an environment full of fear where safety seems scarce for our Asian American neighbors.”
A police spokeswoman confirmed that the artist, who is a teenager, was chased by other kids, fell near 56 Hester St. and was kicked in the face by an unknown suspect. He refused medical attention.
The teen filed a report for harassment, and police said they are investigating the incident.
The theater released a statement saying that Asian Americans experience an “environment full of fear where safety seems scarce.”Robert Miller
It remained unclear Friday what motive fueled the violence. No anti-Asian statements were believed to have been made, law enforcement sources said.
A rep for the theater did not respond to a Post request for additional details.
Assamad Nash, 25, has been charged with murder and robbery in connection to Lee’s death. Investigators have said they believe the heinous act was sexually motivated — but have not ruled it out as a hate crime, either.
I wish the editorial “San Francisco’s Political Foreshock” (Feb. 17) had emphasized that the school-board recall campaign was a grass-roots effort led mainly by Asian-American parents, many of whom are lifelong Democratic voters. Some are immigrants who had never before been politically active. Running a political campaign was unthinkable to many Asian-Americans before this recall.
Postelection analysis shows that the most substantial “yes” votes to recall came from the city’s Asian-majority districts. The recall marks a...
A San Francisco Unified School District office building, Feb. 3.
Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
I wish the editorial “San Francisco’s Political Foreshock” (Feb. 17) had emphasized that the school-board recall campaign was a grass-roots effort led mainly by Asian-American parents, many of whom are lifelong Democratic voters. Some are immigrants who had never before been politically active. Running a political campaign was unthinkable to many Asian-Americans before this recall.
Postelection analysis shows that the most substantial “yes” votes to recall came from the city’s Asian-majority districts. The recall marks a new political awakening and a rejection of the policies advocated by the Democratic Party’s far-left wing. Since Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the nation, expect the awakening to influence America’s future.
A woman wearing a face mask walks past a screen displaying Hang Seng Index, in Hong Kong, China February 24, 2022. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
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Asian, Wall Street shares move higher
Russia advances into Ukraine
Rally may be brief, analysts caution
Western countries sanction Russian banks, SOEs
SINGAPORE, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Asian shares regained ground on Friday, following Wall Street's overnight lead as U.S. President Joe Biden hit back at Russia with harsh sanctions after it unleashed troops, tanks and missiles on Ukraine.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) rose 0.68%, while Japan's Nikkei (.N225) was trading up 1.53% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.16%. Australian shares (.AXJO) added 0.3%, driven by a rebound in tech stocks.
Investors rediscovered their risk appetite overnight after some initial sharp losses, with major U.S. indices posting gains on Wall Street on Thursday, lead by tech stocks.
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However, U.S. share futures slipped in early Asian trade, with S&P500 e-mini futures losing 0.61% and Nasdaq futures down 0.92%.
Analysts worry any rallies might be fleeting.
"Biden's sanctions and reluctance to pour troops in is providing some relief. But this conflict is going to be a protracted issue and add to global inflationary pressures that will keep central banks on track for tightening," said Kyle Rodda, analyst at IG Markets in Melbourne.
"It's okay for now, but in the long-term the market will be tracking to the downside," he said.
Oil prices, which jumped when the Russian invasion began on Thursday before falling back, rose again on Friday on worries about supply disruptions. Brent crude futures were up 2% at $101.20 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude also rose to $94.46, although both benchmarks were off their highs.
Spot gold , however, fell 0.4% to $1,910.96 per ounce, having earlier touched its highest level since September 2020 at $1,973.96 as investors sought safe haven.
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries was at 1.95% after an initial slide to 1.84% on Thursday, its biggest daily drop since late November.
The U.S. dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of major currencies, eased 0.12% to 96.98, having risen on Thursday to levels last seen during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The Russian rouble was at 83.43 against the dollar, clawing back from a record low of 89.986.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Thursday a new iron curtain was descending over Europe.
Ukrainian soldiers battled Russian troops as they poured in from three sides while about 100,000 people fled their homes, according to the United Nations, many hunkering down in basements and subway stations to escape shelling. Ukrainian authorities said 137 people had been killed on the first day of fighting. read more
Western nations redoubled their efforts to crimp Russia's ability to do business, freezing bank assets and cutting off state-owned enterprises. But they stopped short of disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international banking system or targeting oil and gas, which some analysts said had helped markets to recover. read more
On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) closed up 92.07 points, or 0.28%, at 33,223.83 while the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 63.2 points, or 1.50%, to 4,288.7 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 436.10 points, or 3.34%, to 13,473.59.
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Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; editing by Richard Pullin
Oil prices jumped, European natural gas futures soared, and global stock markets tumbled as Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, raising fears of the wider economic crisis that could follow.
Stocks on Wall Street had followed European and Asian markets lower early in the day, but rebounded off its lows in the afternoon and the S&P 500 rose about half a percent.
The early impact on financial markets was immediate and broad, starting in Asia, where the Hang Seng in Hong Kong slid 3.2 percent. In Germany, the DAX index fell nearly 4 percent, while stocks in Moscow collapsed, with the major benchmark down 33 percent, while the ruble fell to a record low against the dollar.
The potential for a wider war increases the risk of runaway inflation, posing profound questions for the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Worries about inflation had already soured the mood in stock markets this year, and the potential for an invasion of Ukraine only added to those concerns. In the week through Wednesday, the S&P 500 had fallen 5 percent as the tension in Eastern Europe rose.
Further stock market declines would not be unexpected if the Russian hostilities continued to frighten investors, analysts said.
“Russia invading Ukraine has added to an already tense year, with investors selling first and asking questions later,” said Ryan Detrick, the chief market strategist of LPL Financial.
Even the recovery on Wall Street late Thursday pointed to the market’s sensitivity to the outlook for inflation. Stocks rallied as oil prices came off their highest point of the day, after President Biden said that the United States and its allies were prepared to release supplies from oil reserves if needed.
By Thursday afternoon, Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, was up 2.3 percent at about $99 a barrel — well off its highest point of the day when it was above $105 a barrel.
Dutch front-month gas futures, a European benchmark for natural gas, rose about 33 percent to above 118 euros a megawatt-hour. Russia provides more than a third of the European Union’s gas, with some of it running through pipelines in Ukraine. A year ago, the gas was selling for about 15 euros a megawatt-hour.
Steep increases in the price of oil and natural gas, as well in metals like nickel, aluminum and palladium, and in agricultural staples like wheat and sunflower oil are likely to spill over into the real economy and raise the inflation level in Europe and the United States by as much as 1.5 percentage points in the next few months, said Capital Economics, a research firm. Inflation in the United States is already at 7.5 percent a year.
Concerns about the economy are increasing at an awkward time for central banks, whose interventions have reversed many steep global stock market declines in the past. Policymakers have less room to do so now because they are committed to raising interest rates to combat inflation.
“There’s clearly a lot less scope for them to actually loosen now given how tight labor markets are and how difficult a problem inflation is,” said Neal Shearing, chief economist for Capital Economics.
The ultimate goals of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are not yet clear, and Western sanctions are being adjusted in increments in an effort to persuade him that the costs of a full-scale invasion and occupation of Ukraine will be too high for Russia to bear, said Angela E. Stent, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.
Russia’s Attack on Ukraine and the Global Economy
Card 1 of 6
A rising concern.Russia’s attack on Ukraine could cause dizzying spikes in prices for energy and food and could spook investors. The economic damage from supply disruptions and economic sanctions would be severe in some countries and industries and unnoticed in others.
The cost of energy.Oil prices already are the highest since 2014, and they have risen as the conflict has escalated. Russia is the third-largest producer of oil, providing roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes.
Gas supplies.Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.
Shortages of essential metals.The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.
Financial turmoil.Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctions designed to restrict Russia’s access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.
Mr. Putin has been pushing for more than a decade for western recognition “of a Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet states,” and may not stop unless he is forced to do so, she said in an online Council on Foreign Affairs conference on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said the United States would cut off Russia’s largest banks and largest companies from the western financial markets, restrict exports of technology to Russia and freeze trillions of dollars in Russian assets.
With more severe financial sections against Russia in the works, banks stocks fell faster than the markets overall. Shares of European banks with the biggest Russian operations plunged: Raiffeisen of Austria fell 23 percent, while UniCredit of Italy fell 13.5 percent and Société Générale of France lost about 12 percent.
In the United States, JPMorgan Chase fell about 3.5 percent and Citigroup slid 4.8 percent.
Energy stocks also fell on Thursday, but they have been a bright spot for investors who have owned them this year. With a gain of more than 19 percent since Dec. 31, it is the only sector in the S&P 500 to be up for the year. Halliburton, Occidental Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Hess and Exxon Mobil are among the fossil fuel stocks that have gained more than 20 percent in 2022.
Anton Troianovski, Austin Ramzy, William P. Davis and Jason Karaian contributed reporting.
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