feb 28  welcome to the home for realtime coverage of markets brought to you by reuters reporters you can share your thoughts with us at marketsresearchthomsonreuterscom us stocks slide as sanctions get more serious 1000 est1500 gmt wall streets main indexes are sliding in early trade on monday as investors assessed the fallout from a new set of sanctions imposed by western countries on russia over its invasion of ukraine world stocks are lower oil prices are higher and russias rouble collapsed to record lows after western allies blocked russian banks off the swift financial network and limited moscows ability to deploy its 630 billion foreign reserves read more all major sp 500 spx sectors fell into the red initially with financials spsy taking the biggest hit banks spxbk are especially weak this with the us 10year treasury yield plunging back below 190 energy spny is moving back to positive territory this as tensions with russia heat up and nymex crude futures pop more than 3 here is your early trade snapshot that is in a nutshell what bernstein is telling its equity clients after the invasion of ukraine by russia this month boosted volatility to multimonth highs and set european stocks for their worst month since october 2020 despite nearterm volatility and increased geopolitical risk real yields are still very low earnings momentum is strong and we remain very much in an inflationary environment all of these factors mean that investors need to keep or increase exposure to equities on a strategic horizon say strategists at the us investment house and even though in the near term they believe more caution is deserved they are also cautiously keeping their tactical overweight of europe versus us equities recent events in the ukraine clearly challenge this view the possibility of further sanctions could lead to even higher energy prices leading to slowing growth in the region in this scenario we would reduce exposure to europe they note however we think it is too early to make a call on this as there are too many unknowns at this point around future sanctions government reactions in terms of fiscal support etc fundamentally the earnings picture for europe is strong buybacks are supportive and the equity yield gap v the us is widening they argue the sp 500 index spx mounted an impressive snap back off its low last week with this the benchmark index formed a hammer candle pattern on the weekly charts suggesting potential for a greater price reversal to the upside after sliding more than 5 at one point last week bringing its decline from its earlyjanuary peak to nearly 15 the spx then recovered and ended the week with a gain of nearly 1 read more a classic hammer candlestick formed in which the lower shadow of the pattern was more than twice the height of the real body as in the market is hammering out a base and attempting to find a bottom that said traders may want to see confirmation that is for the price to quickly followthrough to the upside to add confidence in this pattern so far on monday however cme emini sp 500 futures  although off their overnight lows are still posting a loss of around 14 suggesting a sharply lower downside open for the cash index of note a strong snapback in latejanuary which formed a clear hammer in the futures did lead to several weeks of upside followthrough however the spx failed to end a week above its descending 10week moving average this moving average has capped strength on a weekly closing basis since the spx broke down in midjanuary therefore traders may look for an spx weekly close above the moving average to add confidence that the index has established a more solid floor the candles low at 411465 is now seen as important support for mondays live markets posts prior to 0900 est1400 gmt  click here read more terence gabriel is a reuters market analyst the views expressed are his own