Stocks, dollar hold poise as investors eye Russia developments after shocking Wagner uprising against Putin is called off
- Investors shrugged off the Wagner Group's attempted uprising in Russia ahead of Monday's opening bell.
- US stocks and the safe-haven dollar both traded flat, while gold prices edged higher.
Investors appeared to shrug off a momentous weekend of global news ahead of Monday's opening bell, with Yevgeny Prigozhin's mutiny U-turn likely preventing widespread market chaos.
Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell just 0.1% in premarket trading, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was on course to trade roughly flat at last check.
Meanwhile, the US Dollar Index – which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies – slipped around 0.2%, while the price of fellow safe-haven asset gold rose 0.6%.
Oil benchmarks, which have proved particularly sensitive to news coming out of Russia in the past due to the country's status as the world's second-largest exporter, were also relatively unchanged, with Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude futures both up about 0.5%.
The market moves come after Wagner Group mercenaries mutinied Saturday, taking control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don – which Vladimir Putin called a "betrayal" and "a stab in the back".
But the group's chief Prigozhin ordered his troops – who were within hours of Moscow – to turn back from marching on the Russian capital later on Saturday, claiming he didn't want to shed a drop of Russian blood.
The Wagner boss will be exiled to Belarus but won't face further prosecution, according to a Kremlin spokesperson.
Prigozhin's sudden truce with Putin likely calmed investors' nerves, according to strategists.
"The uprising in Russia could have sent shockwaves across equity and commodity markets but an apparent U-turn has meant only marginal volatility rather than a full-blown correction," AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said Monday.
But commodity analysts also warned that crude prices could be squeezed higher while the market waits to gauge the longer-term impact of the Wagner rebellion.
"We are likely to see a marginal uptick in oil prices in the coming days, if the situation does not deteriorate further," Jorge Leon, a senior vice president at Rystad Energy, wrote in a note to clients Sunday.