The Cboe Volatility Index, otherwise known as the VIX or Wall Street's "fear gauge," touched its lowest level since Oct. 2 on Friday, erasing a bump that had been largely inspired by escalating trade tensions with China and concerns about banks' credit losses.

U.S. stock markets are looking to shed some of last week’s credit concerns, which overshadowed a solid start to the third quarter earnings season, and focus on a busy slate of profit updates and data releases that could underpin performance over the final stretch of the year.

Bank stocks, meanwhile, stabilized on Friday after several reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, including Truist Financial, Fifth Third Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares. That helped steady the group, a day after tumbling on worries about potentially bad loans.

On Wall Street, Amazon’s stock held up despite a widespread outage for its cloud computing service that caused disruption for internet users around the world early Monday. Amazon’s stock rose 0.8%. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

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European stock markets struggled for direction on Friday, but were still on track for another weekly gain, while Wall Street futures got a boost after data showed U.S. inflation rose less than expected last month.

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The strongest action was in the oil market, where the price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude climbed 4.9% to $61.35. The move came after Trump announced sanctions against Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, in hopes of convincing Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to end the brutal war with Ukraine.