(Reuters) – Investors were stunned on Friday after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump ended in disaster, adding uncertainty to financial markets already jittery due to weakening economic data and volatility around U.S. trade policies.
The two leaders traded verbal blows before the world’s media at the White House, pushing markets to react with a risk-off bid for safe-haven Treasuries as the public spat added uncertainty over the prospect of a peace deal with Russia.
“It’s disturbing,” said Jack McIntyre, portfolio manager at Brandywine Global. “It looked like we were moving towards progress on a peace deal or a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and maybe now that gets to come on hold, so you have to price in a little bit more uncertainty,” he said.
Zelenskiy’s U.S. visit was aimed to keep the U.S. from aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the Ukraine invasion three years ago. Instead, he clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance over the war, highlighting Kyiv’s struggle to retain U.S. backing. Trump later accused Zelenskiy of disrespecting the United States.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields, which move inversely to prices, declined after the public confrontation and were last seen at 4.229% from about 4.27% earlier on Friday.
European stock futures fell while U.S. stock indexes lost ground on Friday. The Dax and CAC40 futures fell 0.6% and the Eurostoxx 50 futures dropped as much as 1.4% and were last down 0.8%. The S&P 500 index was last down 0.02%. The euro fell by as much as 0.37% to a two-week low of $1.036, before paring some of that decline to trade at $1.0366.
(Reporting by Sinéad Carew, Davide Barbuscia and Saeed Azhar; Editing by Megan Davies and Daniel Wallis)
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