Global stocks, Wall St recoil from Ukraine jitters

Beijing: Global stock markets and Wall Street futures rebound on Wednesday from jitters over Western sanctions on Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin's authorisation to send soldiers into eastern Ukraine. London and Frankfurt opened higher. Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul advanced.

Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. Oil prices edged higher on unease about possible disruption to Russian supplies. Global stocks sank Tuesday after Washington, Britain and the 27-nation European Union imposed sanctions on Russian banks, officials and business leaders. "Current US sanctions on Russia are less-than-feared by the market," Anderson Alves of ActivTrades said in a report.

Alves noted Western governments have more "acute options" including reducing Russia's access to the SWIFT system for global bank transactions. In early trading, the FTSE 100 in London rose 0.4 per cent to 7,523.96 and Frankfurt's DAX gained 0.7 per cent to 14,798.01. The CAC in Paris added 0.9 per cent to 6,845.85.

On Wall Street, the future for the benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.8 per cent and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7 per cent. On Tuesday, the S&P 500 lost 1 per cent. That put it 10.3 per cent below its January 3 all-time high and into a correction, or a decline of at least 10 per cent but less than 20 per cent. The Dow lost 1.4 per cent and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.2 per cent.