The escalation in the Ukraine crisis is fueling fears of supply shortages for important raw materials such as oil, gas and aluminium. The price of Brent crude oil from the North Sea rose by up to 4.3 percent to a seven-and-a-half-year high and, at $99.50 (87.76 euros) per barrel (159 liters), scratched the mark of 100 dollars. On Tuesday, however, equity investors overcame their initial shock at the Russian actions in eastern Ukraine.
relief
By early afternoon, the DAX and EuroStoxx50 had largely made up for their initial losses of around 2.5 percent and were only just down at 14,690 and 3,984 points, respectively. The Vienna ATX was still down almost 1 percent in the afternoon.
Investors reacted with relief to statements from Moscow, according to which the Russian government’s recognition of the breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk only extended to the areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists, said fund manager Peter Kisler from asset manager Trium. “The cow is not off the ice yet, but that is a way for de-escalation.”
Against this background, investors withdrew from “safe havens”. Gold fell 0.3 percent to $1,900 an ounce (31.1 grams) after initially rising to a nine-month high of $1,913.89. German Bunds were also sold again, raising the yield to 0.269 percent.
main role
At the same time, Moscow’s leading RTS index limited its minus of 11 percent at times and was last listed 2.4 percent lower. The country’s currency recovered from its initial two-year run. In return, the dollar lost almost a percent to 79.10 rubles.
On the other hand, selling pressure on Russian bonds remained high as the EU considered a ban on trading in these papers. This drove the yield on the bonds maturing in 2047 to a three-and-a-half-year high of 5.724 percent.