Stocks plummet as Ukraine war worries investors

Stocks around the world are tumbling Friday, as even a gangbusters report on the U.S. jobs market can't pull Wall Street’s focus off its worries about the war in Ukraine.

Stocks around the world are tumbling Friday, as even a gangbusters report on the U.S. jobs market can’t pull Wall Street’s focus off its worries about the war in Ukraine.

The S&P 500 was 1.7 per cent lower in morning trading, following up on sharper losses in Europe after a fire at the continent’s largest nuclear plant caused by shelling raised worries about what’s next.

Markets worldwide have swung wildly over the last week on worries about how high prices for oil, wheat and other commodities produced in the region will go because of Russia’s invasion, inflaming the world’s already high inflation.

Treasury yields sank again as investors moved money into U.S. government bonds in search of safety, and a measure of nervousness on Wall Street climbed.

All the movements came despite a much stronger report on U.S. jobs than economists expected, one described as encouraging and even “fantastic.” Hiring by employers last month topped expectations by hundreds of thousands of workers, more people came back into the workforce after sitting on the sidelines and jobs numbers for prior months were revised higher.

On the inflation front, growth in wages for workers was slower last month than economists expected. While that’s discouraging for workers hoping to keep up with rising prices at the grocery store, for economists and investors, it means less risk the economy may be headed for what’s called a “wage-price spiral.” In such a reinforcing cycle, higher wages for workers would cause companies to raise their own prices even higher.

“The COVID recovery was in full bloom in the jobs report,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments.