Stocks and Energy Markets Whipsaw After Russia’s Attack on Ukraine

Biden said these measures, along with the sanctions announced Thursday, would “weak” Russia so much that it would give Putin “some tough decisions.”

Mrs. Stent told an online board that Mr. Putin has been pushing for more than a decade for Western recognition of “the Russian sphere of influence in post-Soviet states”, and may not stop unless he is forced to do so. About the foreign affairs conference on Wednesday.

In anticipation of the new sanctions, bank shares fell faster than the markets in general. Shares of European banks with the largest Russian operations fell: shares of Austrian Raiffeisen fell 23%, shares of Italy’s UniCredit fell 13.5% and Société Générale of France lost about 12%. In the US, JPMorgan Chase is down about 2.8 percent and Citigroup is down 4 percent.

Energy stocks fell on Thursday but it was a bright spot for investors who owned them in 2022. With gains of more than 19 percent, energy is the only sector in the S&P 500 that has risen for the year. Halliburton, Occidental Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Hess and Exxon Mobil are among those fossil fuel stocks that gained more than 20 percent in 2022.

Investors looking for safety in the market storm flocked to the usual havens – Treasuries and gold.

“Treasury bonds provide protection in an environment like this,” he said. David Rosenberg, chief economist at his own company, Rosenberg Research, in Toronto. “I think the risks of a recession are rising, and there hasn’t been a recession in recent history where long-term Treasuries haven’t made you money.”

Bond yields are down, which is moving in the opposite direction to prices. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which was up 2.045 percent on February 15, fell to 1.96 percent on Thursday.

Gold, which was below $1,770 an ounce in November, rose above $1,924 at one point in New York, before dropping to $1,899. “Gold has always been one of the places you want to go in a crisis,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

Contribute to reporting Anton TroyanovskyAnd the Austin RamseyAnd the William B. Davis And the Jason Karian.