The last 24 hours have seen additional losses for markets around the world, with oil costs again trading upwards along with the cost of crucial agricultural commodities such as wheat.
Markets wise, volatility has been off the scale, with stock indexes see-sawing thanks to the war in Europe. Oil prices moved to an eight-year high yesterday (Thursday), while stocks plunged. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index was down 2% at the close of play, while investors also took flight from Wall Street with the Nasdaq Composite down 1.6%. In the UK, the FTSE lost 2.6% while the French Cac 40 was down 1.8%. European and US bond yields also fell.
There is also growing fears that the continuing military conflict could result in shortages of vital supplies. JP Morgan’s head of European investment strategy Grace Peters said, “We haven’t even seen major disruptions to supply and demand yet. But a risk premium has come in to reflect the potential of such disruptions in future and that is what is moving markets.
The Federal Reserve Chairman said that the war in Ukraine would dictate how it proceeded with planned interest rate increases, with chairman Jerome Powell saying that the central bank would need to proceed with caution and understand more about the implications of the Ukraine war on the US economy.
With Russia now moving to attack nuclear installations, gold continues to gain with a 0.13% increase in European trading this morning and more set to come.
