Markets remain cautious amid new Russia sanctions

Market participants' attentions remain fixated on developments in Ukraine, helping drive demand for safe haven assets like the Swiss franc, Japanese yen and US dollar. The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union imposed a slew of new sanctions on Russia over the weekend in a bid to put pressure on President Putin as fighting in Ukraine intensified in the last few days. Some Russian banks have been blocked from using SWIFT, a global payments system. Included in the ban was the Russian Central Bank which has built up large reserves of foreign currency over the past few years so this will make it difficult to support the ruble by selling these reserves, hence its dramatic drop in the early European trading session. In an effort to prevent further losses the Russian Central Bank has more than doubled interest rates today, taking them to 20% from 9.5%. The US Dollar Index was up 0.16% trading around 96.76 at the time of writing.