Wall Street Today | Russia defaults on foreign debt for first time since 1918

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Friday became the latest central bank VIP to signal she would support another big increase in interest rates in July in an effort to slow runaway U.S inflation. But she also said the central bank wants to avoid crippling the economy in the process.

Russia defaulted on its foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time in a century, the culmination of ever-tougher Western sanctions that shut down payment routes to overseas creditors.

For months, the country found paths around the penalties imposed after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. But at the end of the day on Sunday, the grace period on about $100 million of snared interest payments due May 27 expired, a deadline considered an event of default if missed.

The US economy is likely to slow in 2022 and 2023 but will “narrowly avoid a recession” as the Federal Reserve implements its rate-tightening plan to curb inflation, the International Monetary Fund said.

“The policy priority now must be to expeditiously slow wage and price growth without precipitating a recession, as global supply constraints and domestic labor shortages are likely to persist, and the war in Ukraine creates additional uncertainties" the IMF said in a statement Friday.

Industrial metals are on track for the worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis as prices are pummeled by recession worries. Copper, which hit a 16-month low of $8,122.50 a ton on the London Metal Exchange on Friday, has ricocheted into a bear market from a record four months ago. Tin also tumbled 21% in its worst week since a 1980s crisis froze London trading for four years.

Oil slipped at the start of the week as investors monitored developments from the gathering of Group of Seven leaders, while fears of a demand-sapping recession continue to hang over the market. West Texas Intermediate fell below $107 a barrel in early trading Monday. The benchmark rose 3.2% on Friday but still posted its first back-to-back weekly loss since April.

Chevron already has its biggest US presence in downtown Houston, where it occupies the former Enron building, and follows in the footsteps of several other tech giants in shifting employees to the Lone Star state.

In February, Amazon unveiled revenue from its ad business for the first time, revealing that it generated more than $31 billion in net sales last year. That's more than doubled since 2019.