(BFM Bourse) – The Parisian index ended down 0.26% on Tuesday, failing to recover after its fall the day before. Market traders shunned risk-taking ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s intervention Friday in Jackson Hole.
The CAC 40 fails to revive the good momentum that has carried it over the past few weeks. After falling 1.8% the day before, the flagship index of the Paris Stock Exchange ended Tuesday down 0.26% to 6,362.02 points, concluding a dismal session where it struggled to find real direction.
“We have started to see a new wave of selling in equity markets as traders have now started to believe that inflation is not going to go away by flipping a switch,” said Naeem Aslam, market analyst at AvaTrade.
In the absence of real catalysts in the face of a deteriorating economy, market operators are avoiding risk taking, a few days before the annual conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole on Friday.
“With the Fed [Réserve fédérale, NDLR] driving the market and the macro blur, all eyes are on this week’s Jackson Hole symposium,” Neil Wilson of Markets.com points out.
The president of the American central bank, Jerome Powell, will intervene in the context of this great rout and his remarks will obviously be scrutinized carefully by investors alert to the slightest sign of the next increases in the Fed’s key rates. For now, the market assigns a 46.5% probability to a 75 basis point (0.75 percentage point) hike and 53.5% to a 50 basis point hike at the next meeting. of the monetary policy committee in September.
Slight lull on the gas
In the meantime, investors have taken note of PMI indices at half mast on both sides of the Atlantic. In the monetary union, the composite index, which measures all private sector activity, stood at 49.2 in August from 49.9 the previous month, falling to an 18-month low . A figure below 50 marks a contraction in activity. In the United States, the PMI Composite index for its part stood at 45 in August against 47.7 in July, a low of two years and three months.
Gas prices, which hit new highs on Monday’s close, have seen a slight lull. The Dutch TTF futures contract for September delivery fell 4.8% to 263.25 euros.
Gas prices were recently buoyed by the announcement that Gazprom would stop gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline from August 31 to September 2, officially for maintenance reasons.
On the other markets, the euro is benefiting from a slight easing of expectations of US rate hikes, which is weakening the dollar. The single currency recovered 0.4% against the greenback, at 0.99982 dollars, after returning for a time above parity.
Oil rebound
Oil prices are on the rise. The prices of black gold are carried by the statements of the Saudi Minister of Energy, Abdelaziz ben Salmane, who affirmed that OPEC + (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies) had the means in particular to “reduce to any time its production” to face the challenges of an oil market “fallen into a vicious circle of low liquidity and extreme volatility”. North Sea Brent for October delivery takes $3.45 to $99.84. The October contract for light sweet crude oil (WTI) quoted on the Nymex advances from 3.68 dollars to 94.09 dollars.
As for values, the rise in the price of black gold has pulled up the shares of oil and oil services groups. CGG and Vallourec each gained more than 6%, Technip Energies gained 4.5% and TotalEnergies won 3.2%.
Excluding SBF 120, wind turbine specialist Vergnet jumped more than 50% after ending dilutive financing.
Chargeurs ended on a very slight increase of 0.06% after having formalized the acquisition of the British leather goods maker Satchel, which allows it to strengthen its position in luxury.
By Julien Marion
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