U.S. stock indexes fell sharply at the end of trading on Friday as investors generally shied away from risk after reports emerged that U.S. authorities expect Russia to invade Ukraine soon.

“Traders in the stock market quickly began hitting the ‘sell’ button following reports that the White House expects Russia to invade Ukraine soon,” notes Edward Moya, chief analyst for U.S. markets at OANDA.

“Many believed that things had calmed down for a while in terms of the situation with Ukraine, but it has become clear that this is not the case,” Market Watch quotes the expert as saying.

Weak statistical data on the U.S. economy and persistent concerns of traders about the acceleration of inflation also put pressure on the U.S. stock market on Friday. The index of consumer confidence in the States in February collapsed to 61.7 points compared to 67.2 points a month earlier, showed preliminary data from the University of Michigan, which calculates this indicator. The index value became the lowest since October 2011. Analysts on average expected it to rise to 67.5 points, according to a Trading Economics survey.

Meanwhile, last week’s data on the more significant than expected acceleration of inflation in the U.S. raised expectations of a sharp tightening of policy by the Federal Reserve (Fed).

St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) President James Ballard said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday that he is ready to support a 100 basis point rise in the benchmark interest rate as early as the first half of the year, that is for the next three meetings to be held in March, May and June.

As traders anticipate a rate hike by the U.S. central bank, “investment rotation across sectors becomes very important,” notes Wilmington Trust chief economist Luke Tilley. Investors are shifting funds into cyclical companies, selling shares of producers of secondary goods and services and the largest representatives of the technology sector.

The sub-index of technology companies in the S&P 500 fell 3% on Friday, non-essential consumer goods producers fell 2.8% and energy companies jumped 2.8%, according to FactSet data. The price of Brent crude oil rose 3.3% to $94.44 a barrel by market close Friday, the highest since September 2014.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 503.53 points (1.43%) to 34738.06 points by market close on Friday.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 85.44 points (1.9%) to 4,418.64 points.

Nasdaq Composite lost 394.49 points (2.78%) and amounted to 13791.15 points.

At the end of the week, the Dow Jones was down 1%, the S&P 500 was down 1.8% and the Nasdaq was down 2.2%.

Shares of Chevron Corp. rose at the end of trading by 2%, Exxon Mobil Corp. – by 2.5%.

The share price of Apollo Global Management fell by 5.7%. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources, that the investment company is close to acquiring the payment terminal business from French company Worldline SA for about 2 billion euros. Apollo’s net income fell 44% in the fourth quarter, while the value of its private equity portfolio rose 5.2%, weaker than the S&P 500 Index’s gain of 11% over the same period.

The share price of Zillow Group Inc. a real estate website operator, rose 13.6% at the close of trading Friday on the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings report.

Shares of Yelp Inc. which owns an online review service added 4.1%. The company’s quarterly net income and revenues were better than analysts’ expectations.