The invasion of Ukraine launched early Thursday morning by Vladimir Putin plunged the main stock markets into a storm of uncertainty. Suspended at the start of the attack and already down for several days, the Moscow Stock Exchange collapsed by more than 30%. But prices are down everywhere. Around 1:05 p.m., the Paris Stock Exchange lost 4.62%, Frankfurt 4.89%, London 3% and Milan 4.87%. The European benchmark Eurostoxx 50 index fell by 3.79%. Earlier, Hong Kong also lost 3.21%. Wall Street was poised to follow the same pattern at the open, with futures for the three major indices losing 2.28% to 2.87%. “It’s panic in the markets,” summarizes Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at the investment company SwissQuote.
Massive sale of equities, purchase of gold (+2.84% to 1,963 dollars per ounce) and government bonds, “with this flare-up of international tensions, the rush towards safe havens is underway”, notes Susannah Streeter, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. The yield on US 10-year debt fell to 1.87% from 1.99% on Wednesday. The price of a barrel of Brent oil from the North Sea soared 8.42% to 104.99 dollars and that of a barrel of American WTI for delivery in April jumped 7.96% to 99.46 dollars, a peak since 2014.
Soaring energy prices, falling bitcoin
On the side of natural gas, the reference market in Europe exploded by 32% compared to the previous day. The price of aluminum also reached a new record. Cereal prices also jumped on the European market, with an unprecedented peak for wheat at 344 euros per tonne, up 15.68%. “Rising energy prices are a big headache for Europe, since 40% of its natural gas and 30% of its oil come from Russia,” explains a Swissquote analyst. Mining groups strongly linked to Russia collapsed in London: Polymetal plunged 35.64%, Evraz 27.24% and Petropavlovsk 24.45%.
Banks and the financial sector were targeted by the first sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States. In Moscow, Sberbank fell by 48.30%, VTB Bank by 41.60%. In Vienna, Raiffeisen lost 18.94%. In Paris, Societe Generale, present in Russia via Rosbank, lost 10.44%. In Milan, UniCredit fell by more than 11.84%, sanctioned for its exposure to Russia, and Intesa Sanpaolo, fell by 8.18%.
After a historic low of 90 rubles to the dollar, the currency fell 2.29% around 1 p.m., after the intervention of the Russian Central Bank to “stabilize the situation”. The dollar, considered a safe haven, gained 1.16% against the European currency, to 0.8951 euro for one dollar, its highest since June 2020. Bitcoin for its part fell by 5.79% to 35,370 dollars .