Geopolitics are raining on the stock market’s parade, but other trades are working. U.S. stock futures fell Tuesday as tensions between Ukraine and Russia intensified. Contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 539 points, or 1.2%. S & P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures shed 1.1% each. Russian President Vladmir Putin warned Tuesday that the threshold for using nuclear weapons has fallen. The Kremlin’s stance now is that Russia would consider using such weaponry if it — or its allies — were met with “with the use of conventional weapons that created a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) their territorial integrity.” That follows news that Ukraine hit a Russian border city with U.S.-made missiles. Global equities were also under pressure. The German DAX fell more than 1% along with France’s CAC 40 . The Stoxx 600 index in Europe shed nearly 1%. That said, four trades are holding up against this backdrop: Gold futures rallied nearly 1% to around $2,640 per ounce. The Japanese yen surged 0.7% against the dollar. Bitcoin climbed 0.3% to $91,602. Treasurys advanced, with the benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield falling 7 basis points to 4.345% (yields move inversely to prices). “We certainly only want to hear the word ‘nuclear’ when it comes to providing clean base load power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and which we are still long of in uranium, not when it comes out of Vladimir Putin’s mouth,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Financial Group, wrote in a note. If geopolitical pressure continues to rise, the four trades above could outperform as 2024 wraps up. Elsewhere Tuesday morning, Evercore ISI upgraded Germany’s BioNTech to outperform from in line. Analyst Cory Kasimov called the “chaos” around Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services a buying opportunity. “We’ve been growing increasingly constructive for some time now,” Kasimov said to clients in a note. “The [upgrade] call is a combination of opportunism, value (both relative & absolute), and an increasingly compelling fundamental outlook around the company’s deep and staggered oncology pipeline.”
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