Shares on Wall Street rallied on Tue, and safe-haven trades went into reverse. The world got some good news on the Russian front. Russia said it plans to withdraw some troops near the Ukrainian border.
Russia’s move came after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested that NATO membership for Ukraine was not on their agenda. Zelenskiy said NATO membership was a remote “dream.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 422.67 pts or 1.22% higher to close at 34,988.84. The broader S&P 500 index rose 1.58%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.53%. The small cap Russell 2000 gained 2.76%
US Treasury notes with long maturities dropped in price and yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note notched up 5.59 basis points (bps) to 2.0434%. However, the 2-year yield Treasury yield fell 2.2 bps to 1.567%.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.4% to 95.989.
The most actively traded US gold futures (Apr) contracts settled down $13.20, or 0.7%, at US$1,856.20/oz. March silver, which is the most actively traded silver futures, fell 50.6 cents, or 2.1%, to end at US$23.342/oz
The front-month Brent and WTI futures closed down $3.20 at US$93.28/bbl and $3.39 at US$92.07/bbl respectively.
Benchmark iron ore futures plunged on Tue, as Beijing ramped up a campaign to stop prices overheating, The steelmaking ingredient's front-month March contract on the Singapore Exchange slumped by as much as 11.4% to $131.55 a tonne.
European equity markets finished higher on Tue. The UK FTSE gained 1.03%, France's CAC 40 rose 1.86%, while the German DAX advanced 1.98%.