The Market On Friday

  Good morning. It is a chilly 40 degrees and sunny here in Upstate NY. We are still feeling the long drawn out effects of a harsh winter. Yesterday was windy and cool. Hey, it's the weekend. We can all settle into a communal sense of relaxing and resting.

  At 8:30 a.m. ET futures are moderately lower and the price of oil per barrel is down. The market is poised to open lower.

  The first quarter corporate reports continue to come in but it is world events that are rattling the market this morning. It looks like we're having an escalation in the Ukraine-Russia mess. Great. What can we say, we are a warring species. We have not figured out that killing off the enemy especially in a resource grab/political duel is similar to cutting off one's own hand. We like to have enemies as an object of our highly evolved though often not useful anger.

CNN: Stocks hit by unease over Ukraine

Germany is Russia's largest trading partner in Europe. New sanctions would hurt both economies.

Tensions in Ukraine escalated sharply Thursday, with Russia embarking on new military drills near the border after Ukrainian forces said they killed five pro-Russian militants within their borders.