Stay on top of the five most important market news on Thursday with Investing.com

By Jeffrey Smith and Anna Beatrice Bartolo

Investing.com – Petrobras (SA:) elects a new board of directors. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is trying to acquire Twitter (NYSE 🙂 (SA :), one of the world’s largest social media companies. Recovery slows and bond yields hold above theirs ahead of the monthly consumer confidence data. The European Central Bank holds its last eight-week policy meeting, and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet loses command to an explosion as the United States sends more military aid to Ukraine.

Here’s what you need to know about the financial markets on Thursday, April 14th.

Check it out: Investing.com’s Economic Calendar

1. Petrobras elects a new board of directors

Petrobras’ ordinary general meeting elected Jose Mauro Ferreira Coelho as director of the company and Marcio Webber as chairman of the board of directors of the state-owned company. Coelho’s entry into the company’s board of directors opens the door for him to be confirmed as Petrobras president at a new university meeting, which is supposed to take place today, the 14th.

These elections to the board of directors of the state oil company, which were marked by technical problems in the voting system, recorded a loss of space for the union in the face of minority nominations. Of the eight nominated by the union for seats on the Petrobras board of directors, only six were elected. Minorities got four seats, while workers got one representative.

In addition to Coelho Webber, Murillo Maroquim de Souza, Rui Schneider, Sonia Villalobos, Marcelo Gasparino da Silva, Rosângela Torres, Luis Henrique Caroli, José João Abdullah Filho, Francisco Petros Oliveira Lima and Marcelo Sequera Filho were also elected.

It is also expected that deliberations will take place on changing Petrobras’ bylaws to strengthen its governance mechanisms. However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the National Treasury (PGFN), which owns Union shares in the company, requested that this discussion be postponed. According to the sources, the order issued by the PGFN to prevent the vote would have come from the Ministry of Mines and Energy itself.

2. Weak dollar

The dollar’s rally was halted as market participants reassessed expectations for violent moves in the wake of consumer inflation data for March, when a slight drop in core inflation provided the first comfort measure in months in what became an increasingly worrying trend in prices.

At 8:07 am, dollar index futures were down 0.23% to 99.680, about a percentage point below the peak reached earlier in the week. The move was also attributed to other central banks showing their anti-inflation credentials, as Canada and New Zealand raised key interest rates by 50 basis points each Wednesday and the Bank of Canada began allowing its bond portfolio to trade.

US bond yields were also lower, with Treasury yields flat at 2.34% and 2.70%, respectively, overnight. That could change later, when initial jobless claims are released last week, or when the Michigan Consumer Survey is released at 11 a.m.

3. European Central Bank meeting

The sequence of central bank news for this week continues later with the European Central Bank meeting.

The European Central Bank is not expected to announce any policy changes at 9:45 am, however, given that the Eurozone economy is the most exposed of all advanced economies to Russia’s war in Ukraine. An example of this came earlier when Volkswagen (ETR 🙂 announced a group handover to it, and also warned that volatility in commodity markets could negatively affect its hedges. JPMorgan (NYSE:SA:) acknowledged a $120 million loss in last month’s frenzy in nickel markets on Wednesday.

The dollar was up 0.3% against the dollar late this morning in Frankfurt, but it has fallen more than 4% since the start of the war. This is despite record inflation that has prompted traders to price more than 50 basis points of interest rate hikes through the end of the year. So far, the European Central Bank has refused to agree to such forecasts.

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4. US stock market

US stock markets are expected to open slightly higher later, but all eyes will be on a string of pre-opening bank earnings releases after traditional leader JPMorgan’s results fell short of expectations.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:) numbers (SA :), Morgan Stanley (NYSE 🙂 (SA :), Wells Fargo (NYSE 🙂 (SA 🙂 and City Group (NYSE 🙂 (SA 🙂 must be disclosed in advance, as do PNC Financial (NYSE:), US Bancorp (NYSE :), and State Street (NYSE :).

At 8:11 AM, the Nasdaq 100 and S&P futures were up 0.18%, while the Nasdaq 100 and S&P futures were down 0.01% and 0.03%, respectively. The three major monetary indices made solid gains on Wednesday as concerns about interest rates eased a bit, with Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s both up more than 1% and up more than 2%.

Another action that can gain importance during the day is Twitter. Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 (SA 🙂 CEO Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, valuing the social media company at $41.4 billion. That’s a 38% premium to the price on the eve of Musk’s disclosure 12 days before that he had acquired a “passive” 9.2% stake in the company.

The offer may appease some Twitter shareholders who have sued Musk for failing to disclose the stake in a timely manner. Either way, the prospect of the world’s richest man seizing one of the world’s most influential media assets is likely to cause an uproar in Washington and among Tesla shareholders, some of whom have criticized Musk’s interest in the company as a distraction.

5. A leading ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was damaged by explosions

Russia’s difficulties in the war with Ukraine increased when the battleship of its Black Sea Fleet was affected by explosions.

The crew of the cruiser Moskva (Moscow) was forced to abandon the ship after a series in a statement. It is not clear whether the bombings were the result of a Ukrainian attack – as the Ukrainian authorities claimed – or poor maintenance and security procedures.

The United States announced earlier that it will send an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine to help fend off a new offensive in its eastern regions.

Separately, the Russian government announced a rescue package worth 19.5 billion rubles for the country’s aviation industry, one of several possible support measures in the coming weeks and months. Russian media speculate that the requested amount could represent up to half of the assets of the country’s National Wealth Fund.