(BFM Bourse) – The flagship index of the Paris market ended Friday’s session up 0.58%, encouraged by Beijing’s easing of certain health restrictions. The day before, US inflation much weaker than expected had excited the market. Over the week as a whole, the index gained nearly 3%.
The Paris Stock Exchange transformed the test this Friday. The CAC 40 ended up 0.58% at 6,594.62 points, which enabled it to gain 2.78% over the whole week.
After having progressed by almost 2%, profit taking could have penalized the Paris market. But the Paris Stock Exchange was able to consolidate its gains thanks to announcements from China.
According to AFP, Beijing has indeed announced several measures in a note published Friday on the internet by public television CCTV. Chinese and foreigners arriving in China will now undergo a quarantine of only eight days, against ten previously, the agency said. In addition, Beijing has put an end to a “circuit breaker” mechanism which canceled international flights for one to two weeks to China in the event of discovery, on the arrival of previous flights, of a number deemed too high. infected passengers on board.
The lower opening of Wall Street did not change the game. The American indices are also struggling to find a trend and are moving in dispersed order at the close of Paris. The Dow Jones yields 0.8%, the S&P 500 is almost stable while the Nasdaq Composite advances by 0.6%.
Towards a more accommodating Fed?
The enthusiasm generated Thursday by lower US inflation than expected by economists has therefore not completely subsided. This data has fueled hopes that the peak of inflation in the United States has passed and that the American Federal Reserve (Fed) is beginning to calm the game a little on future rate hikes.
“Expectations for the FOMC meeting [le comité de politique monétaire de la Fed, NDLR] of December moved strongly after the CPI report [l’indice des prix à la consommation, la mesure de l’inflation]. The market is now firmly in the camp of a 50bps hike, which “would be a slower pace than the previous four rate hikes (75bps)…”, observes John Plassard of Mirabaud. .
“We could see market confidence cool again in the coming weeks once the dust settles and the rhetoric changes: inflation has peaked and the Fed will slow its tightening efforts, but we need more data to confirm that,” warns Oanda market analyst Craig Erlam, however.
Luxury shines
The renewed appetite for risk and the low volumes of this session, a public holiday in France, caused significant rotations towards the values most undermined by investors since the beginning of the year.
Casino (+14.3%), Orpea (+7.9%) and Atos (+11%) thus recorded very marked increases, probably supported by redemptions of shorts, i.e. investors who unwind short selling positions on the securities, which creates a buying trend. Casino and Orpea, heavily indebted, were also able to benefit from the fall in bond rates.
Teleperformance had a very volatile session after resuming trading this morning, eventually gaining 8% at the close. The action had been suspended around 11 a.m. Thursday when it plunged 33% due to the announcement of the opening of an investigation by the Colombian government into the group’s social practices.
LVMH and Kering took their side 2.8% and 2.2% helped by announcements from Beijing but also by the good half-year results of the Swiss Richemont, owner of the Cartier brand.
Highly volatile teleperformance
Conversely, stocks of a defensive nature underwent releases. This is the case of the defense groups Thales (-8.6%) and Dassault Aviation (-3.2%) or the specialist in payment solutions in the world of work Edenred (-7.5%). The same is true for the pharmaceutical groups Sanofi (-5.2%) and Ipsen (-3.7%).
Thales also indicated that some of its data had been published by the Russian-speaking group LockBit 3.0 on the dark web. The French company assured that there was no intrusion into its information systems or impact on its activities. “Thales security experts have identified one of two likely sources of the information theft. It is a partner account on a dedicated exchange portal which led to the disclosure of a limited volume information. Thales is continuing its investigations to identify the other source,” the company said in a statement.
Schneider Electric (+1%) also announced that it had raised the price of its takeover bid by 4% to buy back the 41% of its subsidiary Aveva that it does not own.
On the other markets, the euro continues to rise against the dollar and gains 1.3% to 1.0324 dollars. The greenback thus fell to a multi-month low against the euro zone currency. Oil contracts are moving up sharply. Brent from the North Sea for delivery in January rose 2.5% to 96.04 dollars a barrel, while that of December on the WTI listed in New York rose 3% to 89.04 euros.
Julien Marion – ©2022 BFM Bourse