NEW YORK: Wall Street and European stocks were mixed, while gold dropped on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some progress in Moscow’s talks with Ukraine.

Putin did not provide any details and recent talks between the two countries have made little headway.

In commodity markets, oil prices rose but were way off the multiyear highs reached earlier in the week. US crude recently rose 2.4pc to $108.56 per barrel and Brent was at $111.49, up 1.98pc on the day.The war in Ukraine, now in its third week, and the prospect of central banks tightening monetary policy to tame inflation just as the global economy begins to slow has sent financial markets swinging wildly up and —- mostly — down.

“Overall, central banks now have less flexibility to cushion shocks to equity markets, as they have succeeded in doing over recent years,” said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer, global wealth management, at UBS.

But he said simply selling out of stocks was not advisable. “Our view remains that simply selling risk assets is not the best response to the war in Ukraine,” he said, advising investors to reduce equity exposure.

At 1545 GMT, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 174.28 points, or 0.53pc, the S&P 500 gained 3.99 points, or 0.09pc, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 51.72 points, or 0.39pc, to 13,078.24.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1.22pc and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.23pc.

Emerging market stocks lost 1.40pc. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed 1.56pc lower, while Japan’s Nikkei lost 2.05pc.

Spot gold dropped 1pc to $1,975.40 an ounce, after traded as high as $2,070 on Tuesday.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2022