Wall St Set To Rise At End Of Choppy Week On Ukraine Talks Hope
Wall Street's main indexes were set for a higher open on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin said there were "certain positive shifts" in talks with Ukraine, at the end of a week roiled by geopolitical tensions and inflation angst.
In a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, Putin added talks continued "practically on a daily basis". However, Putin provided no details.
"It certainly shows the extent to which the market is hanging on hope or expectation, that there will be a resolution," said Albert Brenner, director of investment and economic research at People's United Advisors in West Hartford, Connecticut.
"We're going to continue to see highly elevated volatility until we get some resolution in Ukraine. When things resolved, we're going to find ourselves back in the late stages of an economic cycle, we think that can continue and so are overweight equities."
The Kremlin said the conflict in Ukraine would end when the West takes Moscow's concerns seriously at a time when Russian forces bearing down on Kyiv are regrouping northwest of the Ukrainian capital, satellite pictures showed.
Morgan Stanley and Google-parent Alphabet Inc added 2% and 1.3%, respectively, in premarket trading to lead gains among big banks and megacap growth companies.
Energy shares fell, with Chevron Corp and Exxon Mobil down 2.5% and 0.9%, respectively.
The S&P 500 energy sector has risen in nine out of the past 10 sessions and has gained 38.5% year-to-date on soaring crude prices. Oil scaled as much as $139 a barrel earlier this week on supply fears due to Western sanctions on Russian oil and oil products. [O/R]
But the surge has fed into fears of higher inflation and slowing economic growth when global central banks are seeking to tighten their pandemic-era monetary policies.
Wall Street slid on Thursday as four-decade high U.S. consumer prices cemented the case for a key interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve at its policy meeting next week.
All the major indexes are tracking a weekly decline of over 1.3% each, with the blue-chip Dow eyeing its fifth straight weekly loss.
At 8:16 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 288 points, or 0.87%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 41.5 points, or 0.97%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 163 points, or 1.2%.
Oracle Corp slipped 1.1% after the legacy software firm posted a tepid third-quarter profit due to higher spending for its cloud services.
Rivian Automotive Inc tumbled 8.9% after the EV maker warned supply-chain issues could cut its planned production by half to 25,000 vehicles in 2022.
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