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Asana Inc., an unprofitable software maker, was among this week’s winners. The San Francisco-based company’s shares jumped 27%. Electric pickup-truck maker Lordstown Motors Corp. gained 30%, while RealReal Inc., which operates a luxury goods consignment marketplace, rose 31%.

The Bank of Japan maintained its massive stimulus on Friday and warned of heightening risks to a fragile economic recovery from the Ukraine crisis, reinforcing expectations that it will stay an outlier in the global shift towards tighter monetary policy.

European shares inched higher on Friday, attempting to build on strong gains from earlier this week, as investors focussed on Russia-Ukraine peace talks that has shown no tangible progress so far. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.2% by 0814 GMT and was headed for its best weekly performance since November 2020.

This is an opportunity for investors and advisors to revisit their long-term portfolio allocation strategy towards internationally diversified funds. The well-known home bias of investors everywhere can be looked into during this phase of the markets.

Investors sold U.S. high yield funds to the turn of $1.86 billion and pulled $3.8 billion out of U.S. short/intermediate investment-grade funds, marking a 10th weekly outflow in a row.

Gold has shed about 2.7% so far this week with investors initially pricing in possibilities of aggressive interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Major investors have called Russia "uninvestable", but DIY investors - many of whom took up stock-picking during the "stonks" trading frenzy in the pandemic - have been undeterred.

The broad-based S&P 500 had lost 0.3 percent to 4,400.15, and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was 0.3 percent lower at 13,578.31.

The five-year contract of ICICI Bank’s CDS, which acts as a shield against likely default on outstanding debt securities by an issuer, yielded 121.53 versus 105.74 on February 21.

Total forex reserves were at $622.2 billion for the week ended March 11, compared with around $632 billion a week earlier, showed Reserve bank of India (RBI) data.