Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com – U.S. stock prices were higher during early trades on Thursday in New York. The increase was despite intense diplomatic efforts in Brussels by the U.S. to convince Europe to place more economic pressures on Russia in order to end the war in Ukraine.

At 7:40 am ET (1140 GMT), the market was up 136 points or 0.4%. They were also up 0.5% (0.6%) and 0.5% (both 0.5%). Following a week with solid gains, the main cash indexes fell on Wednesday. This was due to market reaction to faster monetary tightening and the possible global slowdown as a result of war in Ukraine.

Joe Biden, the U.S. President, will be participating in summits of NATO and G7. He also plans to attend an EU meeting later that day. These meetings may lead to new sanctions regarding Russian energy exports. These meetings take place one month after Russia invaded Ukraine. This triggered sharp sell-offs on equity markets as well as a sharp drop in the prices of oil, metals and other commodities. All of these are greatly influenced by Russian exports. There is still intense fighting on the battlefield, with Russia declaring that they have captured Izyum near Kharkiv and Ukrainian forces destroying at least one Russian land ship which was supporting the troops under siege of Mariupol.

However, the domestic news agenda is very sparse. Charles Evans, Chris Waller and James Bullard from the Federal Reserve will offer fresh commentary on how tighter monetary policy should be. The February Durable Goods Order data are due. These will show a slight decline in growth in light of the recent pandemic-driven increase in hardware spending. Darden Restaurants and FactSet Research lead a weak earnings list. Olive Garden’s owner missed its quarterly profits forecasts and issued full-year guidance that was well below what it expected.

Washington is still focused on confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson.

The conflict’s likelihood of escalating was increasing as the fighting intensified and there were more Western support for Ukraine at the summits. Importers will have to hunt barrels on other global markets if there are any further restrictions placed on European purchasing. French company TotalEnergies (NYSE 🙂 announced late Wednesday it will also stop purchasing Russian crude oil by the end the year. This announcement came after intense pressure from Shell (LON :), BP(NYSE 🙂 and other European firms. However, it still plans to purchase Russian gas.

U.S. crude futures had risen 0.1% to $115.03/barrel by 7:40 am ET (1140 GMT)

The barrel price rose 0.8% to $1952 per barrel. However, the barrick was flat at $1.0994 against the dollar.