New stressful trading session because of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict

With Russia’s recent escalation in Ukraine, the past week has been tough for stock markets, and things are far from over.

The lack of visibility and fear that the situation will get worse is hindering investor initiative – even though Ukraine and Russia agreed to talk yesterday and are ready to hold the second round of talks soon.

European and American indices were still in the red at the time of writing, while many commodities have gained value.

What to monitor now?

• As the Russian ruble plunged to record lows, some aggressive traders are following currency pairs against the RUB to take advantage of any price changes that may be triggered by developments in the Russian-Ukrainian situation.
• Investors are looking for safe-haven currencies like the USD, the JPY, and the CHF.
• Fed Chief Jerome Powell will testify before Congress later on this week and investors will closely monitor any remarks on inflation and monetary policy.
• The NFP figures that will be published this Friday are expected to report a gain of 450K jobs in February and wage growth will be carefully followed.
• The currency pairs including the USD will react to any clues about the U.S. central bank’s decision to raise interest rates faster than expected.
• The EUR/USD is trading around the 1.13 level, which may play an important role in the future direction of the FX pair.
• The GBP/USD is hovering around 1.3407 below the Ichimoku cloud.
• Gold is also playing its role of safe haven asset and seems to shine amid geopolitical tensions, as well as higher pressure global inflationary environments. Monitor the $1.905 level.
• Brent oil is hovering around the $100 mark and will still be very volatile as long as the Ukraine-Russia crisis continues, as tensions in this part of the world affects global oil supply.
• Other commodities are reaching new records due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and international sanctions against Russia, such as gas, copper, palladium, aluminum, nickel, wheat, soybeans, corn, oats, as well as sunflower seed oil, among others.
• As Russia might use crypto-assets to avoid international financial sanctions and Ukraine already accepting donations in BTC and other altcoins like ETH and USDT, Bitcoin volume spiked in Russia and Ukraine. With so many uncertainties, the “safe haven quality” of cryptocurrencies might also be put to test in the upcoming weeks.

Final word

Given the tensions in Eastern Europe, increasing market volatility and uncertainty might be a great tool for you to increase your profits if you succeed in spotting the best trading opportunities for your trading strategy.

However, higher uncertainty also means higher risk, so you should remember to protect your trading capital against market headwinds. Adjust the size of your trades to the trading conditions (as well as your leverage if you can), and use stop-loss orders to only lose what you’re comfortable with.

If you succeed in carefully managing your positions to provide the best risk-adjusted returns, you will get a chance to be part of the top 5 winners of the Trading Cup 2021 and manage a fund of up to $500,000.