Shares on Wall Street started out in the red on Tue, and then surged into the black, before returning into the red again. At one time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 500 points.
The first bit of bad news for equity markets was the decision of the White House to ban Russian energy imports. That move was matched in part by the UK, which will phase out Russian crude imports by the year's end. US WTI crude oil futures jumped as much as 7% before moderating on Tue.
There was there some good news. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News he is no longer pressing for NATO membership for Ukraine, and he is open to "compromise" on the status of two breakaway pro-Russian territories.
However, shares were not able to hold their gains. The Dow finished down 184.74 pts or 0.56% to close at 32,632.64. The broader S&P 500 index fell 0.72%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite retreated 0.28%. The small cap Russell 2000 gained 0.60%.
US government bond yields rose as inflation fears escalate. The yield on the 10- year Treasury note notched up 7.22 basis points (bps) to 1.8456%.
At the end of Tue regular trading, the front-month Brent and WTI futures were up $4.77 at US$127.98/bbl and $4.30 at US$123.70/bbl respectively.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) halted nickel trading after prices doubled on Tue to more than $100,000 per tonne. Chinese nickel and stainless steel producer Tsingshan has held a large short position in nickel.
Wheat futures in Chicago earlier jumped to a record US$13.635 a bushel before plunging as much as 7.1%.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Apr) contracts settled up $47.40, or 2.4%, at US$2,043.30/oz. May silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, rose $1.175, or 4.6%, to end at US$26.895/oz.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.21% to 99.085.