US open: Stocks slip amid grim news out of Ukraine and oil sanctions debate

Wall Street's main market indices gave up early gains following the release of a mixed batch of economic data even as investors kept a wary eye on the latest developments in Ukraine.

The mood was grim amid news of intensified bombing of Ukrainian cities even as the Russian fleet headed towards the Ukrainian port of Odessa and with approximately 1.0m people having reportedly already fled the country.

In the background, delegations from Ukraine and Russia were holding a second meeting, but no headlines regarding their content or of any progress, or the opposite, had yet broken across the wires.

As of 1642 GMT, the Dow Jones Industrials was trading down by 0.45% at 33,739.80, alongside a 0.54% decline for the S&P 500 to 4,3636.02 while the Nasdaq Composite was retreating 1.07% to 13,605.52.

In parallel, front month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were off by 0.47% to $110.08, having climbed to $116.57 in overnight trading, which marked their highest level since 2008.

April gold futures on COMEX however were up 0.385 to $1,929.70/oz., but had also come off earlier highs.

Worth noting, when asked the night before whether the US might cut Russian oil and gas imports, President Joe Biden said that "nothing is off the table", although an immediate move appeared unlikely, as it might boost profits for Russian companies, even as it hit the American economy.

Nevertheless, on Thursday, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, backed banning imports of Russian oil.

On a related note, some observers were musing out loud regarding the need to offer Moscow potential 'off ramps' in order to try and deescalate the situation and not just continue to pile on massive sanctions.

One of those was Bloomberg's Clive Crook, who noted that for the US and Europe to work explicitly towards regime change in Moscow would be "extraordinarily risky" even if the current "drastic economic measures" were avowedly intended to "destroy the Russian economy and (maybe) lead to the overthrow of its government."

Crook added: "[...] If the regime-change scenario happens, this tension will be applauded as a necessary part of a brilliant strategy," he wrote.

"If it doesn’t, the allies might regret failing to offer Putin an off-ramp."

On the purely economic side of things, fresh data revealed that the downwards trend in initial US jobless claims had resumed, with the Department of Labor reporting

Growth in the US services sector on the other hand slowed more sharply than expected in February, according to the Institute for Supply Management's closely-followed Purchasing Managers' Index.

The PMI slipped from a reading of 59.9 in January to reach 56.5 (consensus: 61.1).