By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com — The S&P 500 moved off lows Thursday, but remained under pressure as hopes of a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict suffered a setback, while inflation surged to fresh 40-year highs.

It fell by 0.9%. Or 269 points.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said there was “no progress” on discussions concerning a ceasefire, and said that demands from his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov would amount to a surrender for Ukraine, something the country isn’t prepared to do. 

Russia is not in the position to declare a ceasefire at this time. They are seeking a surrender by Ukraine. This is not what they’re going to get,” Kuleba said following a sit down with Russia’s Lavrov.

Many had hoped that Ukraine’s softer stance on seeking to join the NATO military alliance – in the days leading up to the meeting – would pave the path toward a diplomatic resolution.

The absence of any breakthrough has renewed concerns that key commodities like oil, gas and wheat — which are key exports to Russia and Ukraine — would remain high and will keep inflation rising longer.

It rose 0.8% in February. That pushes inflation to 7.9% for the year. This is the largest annual increase since 1981.

“The risk is that the inflation we are enduring now could become more entrenched, as it did in the 1970s. That is why the Fed is so wedded to raising rates starting in March,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton.

Technology dropped nearly 3% after investors left big tech. Amazon (NASDAQ:), however, bucked the trend by announcing a $10billion share buyback program as well as a 20% stock split.

The tech sector was also affected by falling semiconductor stocks due to concerns about the Russia-Ukraine conflict causing supply issues for the chip industry.

As banks became more concerned about rising concerns over red-hot inflation, slow economic growth and the possibility of recession, they lost ground on their gains.

U.S. Bancorp, Synchrony Financial and Bank of New York Mellon were all significantly lower than they were before U.S. Bancorp’s announcement that Thomas P. (Todd Gibbons) would be leaving as its chief executive effective Aug. 31, 2010.

“The headwinds for banks is clearly the Russia exposure, but it’s also the flattening in the yield curve,” Melissa Brown, managing director of applied research at Qontigo, an index and analytics provider, said in an interview with Investing.com on Thursday. “Higher rates are fine for banks as long as short term rates are lower, but if that’s not the case, that’s going to hurt banks.”

Even though oil prices drained their intraday gains from energy stocks, they were still one of the few green sectors.

Crowdstrike drew the most attention from investors, with mostly good results on the earnings front.

Crowdstrike (NASDAQ) released a positive outlook for full-year following reporting quarter results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. The quarterly results sent its shares up more than 12 percent.

Asana (NYSE) also posted better-than-expected quarterly performance and guidance. The upside surprise was that the company’s outlook for growth could prove to be costly, as it increases investment. Shares fell over 23%.

“The product/sales expansion is coming at the expense of aggressive investment, which we expect investors to look at cautiously given the challenging macro/geopolitical environment,” Oppenheimer said as it cut price target on the stock to $85 from $100 amid valuation concerns.