Wall Street Today | Wood's ARK stays the course, betting big on innovation

U.S. equity futures wavered early Monday and stocks appeared set for a cautious open as investors assessed geopolitical worries about Ukraine that sparked risk aversion at the end of last week.

Australian shares fluctuated and contracts for Japan and Hong Kong pointed lower. Oil extended a rally. Bonds in Australia and New Zealand rose following a Treasuries jump Friday on demand for havens. The Swiss franc gained.

A dovish Reserve Bank of Australia is driving hedge funds to ramp up bets against the nation's currency as the policy stance increasingly diverges from a hawkish Federal Reserve.

Leveraged funds have boosted net Australian dollar shorts to the most since November, according to the latest data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to Feb. 8. Futures and options speculators piled into positions to benefit from a weaker Aussie after RBA Governor Philip Lowe pledged to remain patient in assessing inflation even as peers in the U.S. and EU made it clear they will respond to heated price growth.

Shares of Roblox, Block and Robinhood are down at least 25% each over the first six weeks of the year. More than half of all of the stocks in the ETF, which goes by the ticker ARKK, are down 20% or more in 2022, according to FactSet.

U.S. cotton plantings are expected to climb amid strong foreign demand, higher input costs for farmers and prolonged drought in Texas, the crop's top growing state. The potential increase for the world's largest cotton supplier comes just after cotton futures in New York touched a fresh decade high at the end of January. The fiber surged 44% last year, driven by projections for a second global deficit.

U.S. farmers are projected to sow 12 million acres for the season beginning Aug. 1, up about 7.3% from the previous year.

Under the offer, Crown shareholders will receive A$13.10 cash per share. The stock closed Friday at A$12.39. A meeting to vote on the offer is expected to be held in the second quarter of the year, Crown said in a statement Monday.

Brent Whitehead and Matt Lohstroh are mining bitcoin off flare gas from oil drilling. Their company, Giga, places a shipping container full of thousands of bitcoin miners on an oil well, diverts the natural gas into generators, which convert the gas into electricity that is then used to power the miners.

The process reduces CO2-equivalent emissions by about 63% compared to continued flaring, according to research from Denver-based Crusoe Energy Systems.