Closing summary
We’re wrapping up this blog now but it will be back tomorrow and in the meantime please do follow developments in the Ukraine crisis as they happen, via our global, 24/7 news blog on Russia’s war. Please click here.
Here are the main events of the day in US politics:
- The White House said the world needed to be “clear eyed” about Russia’s announced scaling back of its offensive in Ukraine, and not to take the country’s president Vladimir Putin at his word, adding “no-one should be fooled”.
- Former US labor secretary, economist, academic and wildly popular Guardian columnist Robert Reich noted wryly how Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Fox foghorn Tucker Carlson all sound the same.
- Joe Biden and European allies intend to keep turning the financial screws on Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, the White House announced.
- Donald Trump is not out of the woods by any means in terms of his legal jeopardy, according to a number of new developments.
- The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a second coronavirus booster shot for American adults older than 50.
- Ketanji Brown Jackson should be confirmed to a seat on the US Supreme Court, almost half of US voters believe, with only around a quarter opposed, according to the latest Politico/Morning Consult opinion poll.
When the purse is political. US stocks rose today, with the Dow and S&P notching their fourth straight session of gains, on optimism some progress was being made toward a deal to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia pledged to cut down on military operations around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine, while Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status, the first sign of progress toward peace in weeks, Reuters reports.
Prices eased for oil and other commodities, helping calm concerns about rising inflation and the path of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, which has started hiking interest rates to combat rising prices. For the Guardian’s global live blog covering the war 24/7, please click here.
“If you look over the course of the month this war has been going on, the market has priced in much more bad news than good news,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York.
“It certainly shows the market has a natural coiled spring that will be a reaction function to any good news and we saw a bit of that this morning, but everything will have to be taken with a grain of salt and we will have to see things actually play out versus being actually talked about.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 338.3 points, or 0.97%, to 35,294.19, the S&P 500 gained 56.08 points, or 1.23%, to 4,631.6 and the Nasdaq Composite added 264.73 points, or 1.84%, to 14,619.64.
After a dismal start to the year for stocks that saw the S&P 500 fall into a correction, commonly referred to as a drop of more than 10% from its most recent high, the benchmark index is now down less than 3% on the year.
Still, there were signs of market nervousness that the Fed could make a policy mistake that leads to a slowdown, or possibly a recession, in the economy as the widely tracked U.S. 2-year/10-year Treasury inverted for the first time since September 2019.
“While I think the ultimate result of an aggressive Fed tightening cycle is a recession, I do not expect it to occur quickly. Historically speaking, all recessions are preceded by 2s10s inversions, but not all inversions result in recessions,” said Ellis Phifer, managing director, fixed income research, at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.
As the conflict in Ukraine has escalated in recent weeks, already rising prices saw more upward pressure on commodities such as wheat, energy and metals.
But even with the recent surge in inflation, data on Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence rebounded from a one-year low in March, while the current labor environment favors workers.
