(News Bulletin 247) – Wall Street should continue its decline on Monday at the start of the session, the mutiny of the Wagner group in Russia favoring the decline in safe havens and the rise in oil.

A few minutes before the opening, the ‘futures’ contracts on the main New York indices yielded 0.1%, suggesting a note of weakness at the opening.

On Friday, the S&P index had ended five weeks in a row of increases by retroceding 1.5% over the week, its worst weekly performance since March.

Investors are watching with concern as tensions rise in Russia, where a civil war appears to have been narrowly averted over the weekend following the failed coup attempt led by the Wagner Group.

‘The armed uprising of Yevgeny Prigojine’s group of mercenaries against the Russian army over the weekend dealt a severe blow to President Putin and revealed the cracks in the regime’, say the Capital Economics teams.

“There are still a lot of unknowns about how things will evolve at this stage,” said the economic research firm.

At Deutsche Bank, Russia is seen as heading towards months, if not years, of political instability.

‘The situation could increase the risk of escalation by Putin in order to regain his authority, or on the contrary make him vulnerable, which could have different implications for Europe, Ukraine and the markets as a whole’ , warns the German bank.

This rise in tension in Russia is contributing to a small rebound in oil prices, with American light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) trading at 69 dollars, against 67.6 dollars on Friday morning.

The price of gold, a traditional safe haven, rose 0.5% to 1939.6 points, while the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds fell four basis points to 3.69%.

On the foreign exchange market, the dollar continues to recover against the euro, which fell around 1.0915.

This week will also see the publication on Friday of new data on inflation, which explains a form of wait-and-see attitude among market players.

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