Wall Street quietly mixed early while crude prices soar $3 after Trump sanctions Russian oil giants

Audio By Carbonatix

Trading on Wall Street was modestly mixed ahead of the opening bell Thursday while crude prices jumped more than 5% after U.S. President Donald Trump announced sanctions on Russian oil giants.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were each up less than 0.1%, while futures for the Dow Jones industrials inched down about 0.1%.

The sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil are intended to drive Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and help end Moscow’s brutal war on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, European Union leaders were holding a summit Thursday, aiming to greenlight still more sanctions against Russia and press ahead with plans to use Moscow’s assets that are frozen in Europe to fund Ukraine’s war effort and economy for at least the next two years.

U.S. benchmark crude oil gained $3.13 to $61.63 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose $3.13 to $65.72 per barrel.

Tesla slid 3.2% after the electric car maker run by Elon Musk reported that its third-quarter earnings plunged 37% from a year ago, marking the fourth quarter in a row that profit declined.

In a conference call with investors, Musk shifted attention away from selling cars while highlighting Tesla's other businesses, including its driverless robotaxi service, its AI product and its Optimus robots.

IBM sank 6.8% after its results showed a slowdown in cloud revenue growth, even as it beat Wall Street's sales and profit targets. IBM says that the cloud and AI remain its two prime areas of focus.

Molina Healthcare tumbled more than 20% after it badly missed analysts' third-quarter profit targets and slashed its full-year earnings forecast well below expectations due to ongoing cost pressures across all segments.

At midday in Europe, Germany's DAX slipped 0.3%, Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.6% and the CAC 40 in Paris rose 0.4%.

Chinese shares rose from losses earlier in the day as leaders in Beijing were wrapping up an important Communist Party meeting that will set the agenda for the coming five years.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.7% to 25,967.98 while the Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.2% to 3,922.41 as reports indicated Washington may tighten restrictions on exports to China of products made using U.S. software.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 shed nearly 1.4% to 48,641.61 on reports that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is preparing a stimulus package larger than last year’s of nearly 14 trillion yen (about $92 billion). SoftBank Group led losers, with shares shedding more than 4% after it unveiled plans to finance its investments in artificial intelligence by issuing U.S. dollar and euro dominated bonds.

Takaichi has also said she favors keeping interest rates near their current low level of close to zero, and that has caused the Japanese yen to weaken against the dollar. The dollar rose to 152.75 Japanese yen Thursday, up from 151.94 yen.

South Korea's Kospi fell 1% to 3,845.56, with investors remaining cautious while trade negotiations with the U.S. made limited progress.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added less than 0.1% to 9,032.80.

Taiwan's Taiex slipped 0.4%, while India's BSE Sensex rose 0.6%.

In other trading Thursday, the price of gold recovered about 1.6% to $4,131.80 after sliding for two days from its record high.