Tag Archives: crisis

For one brief moment this month, cryptocurrency prices appeared to be decoupling from the volatility roiling Wall Street — but are once again being dominated by risk-aversion stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. For Bitcoin (BTC-USD), a debate has arisen about its use cases, such as (legitimate) Ukrainian donations, or (questionable at best) flows from Russians looking to avoid sanctions. With the token whipsawing between a range of $37,000 and $45,000 over the past month, many… Source link

Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. gas prices were rising rapidly — and are now marching toward a national average of $4 per gallon or higher in the coming months with the crisis showing no signs of abating. As sanctions isolate Moscow and crimp Russian energy supplies, skyrocketing crude oil and gas prices will impact consumers and businesses already facing the highest inflation levels since 1982. On Thursday, Brent (CL=F) briefly flirted with $120 per barrel, with U.S. oil ( Source link

The authors are former commissioners of the IRS. The IRS is in crisis. Geoffrey Chaucer said 632 years ago that curses come back to haunt their originator, just as birds come back to their own nest. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he correctly predicted that years of starving the Internal Revenue Service of funds would create a deep level of dysfunction that is a curse on millions of honest taxpayers. Taxpayers owed refunds are often not getting them and cannot find out why; taxpayers… Source link

All in all, the stock market is hanging tough in what has been a turbulent two weeks for humanity. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 600 points on Wednesday as of this writing. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are nearing gains of 2%. All three major indexes are nicely off the lows hit by the close of trading on Feb. 23, a mere hours before Russia invaded Ukraine. Every member of the FAANG [Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet] cohort has gained in the… Source link

This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe Wednesday, March 2, 2022 As sanctions close a few doors, a crypto window opens Cryptocurrency has finally started behaving like something that resembles a safe haven, with bitcoin (BTC-USD) and other digital tokens taking off on Tuesday as Russia’s incursion into Ukraine took a more dramatic turn. As Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith has been… Source link

This article first appeared in the Morning Brief. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe Tuesday, March 1, 2022 US may have the biggest piece on the geopolitical chess board There are multiple takeaways from a particularly intense week that saw Russia’s incursion into Ukraine prompt Western economies — in a rare and historic show of force and unity — put the financial squeeze on Moscow. But one in particular stands out. The… Source link

A good buying opportunity into a stock market well off its highs has taken shape, argues BlackRock Investment Institute Global Chief Investment Strategist Wei Li and her team. The rationale: the escalating situation between Russia and the West will likely mean a slower pace of interest rate hikes from global central banks. “We see fast-rising energy prices exacerbating supply-driven inflation, both delaying and raising its peak. We think central banks will need to normalize policy to pre-Covid… Source link

(Bloomberg) — As the conflict in Ukraine deepens and the fallout from increasingly tough sanctions on Russia reverberate through global markets, investors are rushing to keep up. Most Read from Bloomberg Safe havens like bonds, gold and the U.S. dollar rallied on Monday, while classic risk-sentiment proxies like the Australia dollar tumbled. Emerging market currencies also came under pressure, with the South African rand and the Turkish lira sinking. U.S. and European equity futures tanked…. Source link

With a global conflict afoot, gold (GC=F) has revived its status as a safe-haven in times of turmoil. But Bitcoin? Not so much. Bullion on Thursday surged close to $2000 per ounce, its highest since 2020, after Russian forces attacked multiple targets across Ukraine, which prompted investors to flee risky assets. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar — the world’s premier reserve currency and another safe-haven during market duress — is gaining ground against a broad basket of currencies. However,… Source link

The Federal Reserve is unlikely to back off raising interest rates starting at its March meeting as it wrestles with trying to fight red-hot inflation against the backdrop of Russia invading Ukraine. “The current situation is different from past episodes when geopolitical events led the Fed to delay tightening or ease because inflation risk has created a stronger and more urgent reason for the Fed to tighten today than existed in past episodes,” said Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius… Source link