By Bond Robertson 
The heavy Dow Jones Industrial Average opened for the fourth time in five days. Tensions are related to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, as well as to the upcoming minutes of the US Federal Reserve.
This is what it looked like at the opening on Wall Street:
- The Dow Jones index fell 0.17%
- Nasdaq down 1.12 percent
- Standard & Poor’s 500 down 0.43 percent
Thus, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened lower for the fourth time in five days.
The international market has recently been driven by concerns about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia announced, on Tuesday, that it would end military exercises in the Crimea. But NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that Russia was showing no signs of stepping down.
Oil prices are particularly affected by news related to the conflict, and on Wednesday the price of a barrel of North Sea oil (Brent Spot) reached $94.9 – 1.54 percent more than today.
Otherwise, high inflation and plans of the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates are also affecting the market.
During the evening, the central bank will present the minutes of the previous monetary policy meeting. But after that meeting, which took place in January, figures showed that US producer prices rose much more than expected in January.
Annual growth ended at 9.7 percent, six-tenths higher than the consensus estimate, DNB Markets noted in its morning report.
The brokerage believes that this may render the interest rate meeting minutes out of date.
– The press release from the January meeting was confusingly similar to the one that came after the December meeting, but the subsequent press conference stole the show, chief economist Kjersti Haugland wrote in the report.
This led the markets to price hikes in interest rates. After the meeting, more information came in, including an unexpectedly high inflation number for January, which fueled expectations of austerity.