Dow futures were down more than 400 points in pre-market trading on Monday while global crude blew past $100 a barrel as investors grappled with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The markets reacted to bleak developments in Eastern Europe, where Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear-armed forces on alert while diplomats launched peace talks in Belarus. S&P 500 futures were down more than 50 points while Nasdaq futures fell by more than 150 points before the opening bell on Wall Street. In Russia, the economy is reeling after the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow’s central bank as well as the country’s finance sector. Russia’s currency, the ruble, fell around 30% against the US dollar on Monday, a result of the Western alliance’s decision to cut major Russian lender off from the SWIFT international messaging system. The situation is so dire that the Russian central bank prevented the stock market from opening in Moscow. The US Treasury Department announced new sanctions that would immobilize any assets of the Russian central bank in the United States or held by Americans. The Biden administration estimated that the move could impact “hundreds of billions of dollars” of Russian funding. Overseas, the major indices took substantial losses. The FTSE in London dropped by 1% while the German DAX 30 fell 2%. France’s CAC 40 was also down around 2%. In Asia, results were mixed as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost some 1.6% before ending the day down 0.2%. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 ended up 0.2% after being down most of the day. The Korean Kospi also ended up 0.8%. The Shanghai Composite in China ended up 0.3%.
