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Sanctions, Bombings Intensify; Pre-Markets in the Red

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Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Pre-market futures begin another month in the red. So far, we’ve had no up-months in 2022. Amid Russian army bombings in Ukraine beginning to intensify, as sanctions sink their claws deeper into the Russian economy, we’re now entering the “war is hell” phase of the conflict. The Dow is -125 points at this hour, the Nasdaq is -60 and the S&P 500 -15 points.

Russians are now being blocked from using credit cards issued by Mastercard (MA - Free Report) and Visa (V - Free Report) , two more companies willing to take a near-term hit to their top line in order to take a stand against Russian aggression. As it is, we may already be seeing evidence that Russian President Putin has miscalculated the amount of time necessary to secure the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Citizens and government leaders alike — including Ukraine President Zelensky — remain defiant a week into the invasion.

Supply disruptions in oil & gas, wheat and key minerals like titanium can be expected going forward, based on Russia’s strength in exports of each of these. This can be expected to add another dollop to an inflation forecast already due for a remedy — or at least a partial one from the Fed hiking interest rates, expected two weeks from tomorrow. The Russia-Ukraine war adds a new wrinkle to the Fed’s data to be considered ahead of the move; some analysts are going back to expecting a 25 basis-point hike instead of 50.

After today’s market open, we get two key economic items by way of Markit Manufacturing PMI and ISM Manufacturing, both for the month of February. Both are expected to be relatively in-line with the prior month, and both comfortably above the 50-point range, which indicates growth. We’ll also see a new Construction Spending report for January released after the opening bell.

Tomorrow and Friday bring us new jobs reports, which will be more important information for the Fed to absorb during its two day meeting mid-month. A month ago, the private sector surprised to the downside with negative -300K jobs created in the most recent report from Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) , which was countered by the +467K jobs created overall in non-farm payrolls reported by the U.S. government. Both are expected to come in around +400K jobs created last month.

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