(CercleFinance.com) – The Paris stock market (-1%) limits the breakage a little 40 minutes from the close after having lost up to -1.5% towards 7,075 points (under 7,090, the uptrend is threatened) , amid lingering concerns about the Fed’s monetary policy tightening.
The Euro-Stoxx50 lost -1.3% and fell back to 4.195, which took the index from equilibrium in 24 hours to a loss of -2% over the past week.
Wall Street continue to evolve without direction or in slight decline: the Dow Jones grabbed 0.1%, the S&P500 crumbled by -0.1% and the Nasdaq fell by -0.7%.
The trend has moved up and down this week, before heaviness prevailed, reflecting the questions linked to the latest statements by Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, and John Williams (FED of New York) which reinforced fears of a faster rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
However, the firm tone of the president of the American central bank was not enough to calm the euphoria of the markets.
‘Despite more aggressive (‘hawkish’) comments from major central banks, investors continue to position themselves against the Fed in favor of corporate results, which is supporting equities’, note the strategists of Liberum.
According to analysts, the medium and long-term trend remains positive, and the current weakness is only materializing a temporary slowdown, with no real signs of reversal.
“At the start of the year, market sentiment is (…) more optimistic than at the start of autumn 2022”, underlines Geoffroy Goenen, head of European equity management at Candriam.
There was a number in the US on Friday and it’s a good surprise: US consumer confidence improved more than expected in February, to 66.4 this month, from 64.9 in January, according to preliminary results of the monthly survey conducted by the University of Michigan (in February 2022, the ‘UMich’ index showed 62.8).
The sub-index measuring consumers’ judgment of their current situation jumped to reach 72.6 in February against 68.4 the previous month and the one measuring the evolution of their expectations fell back to 62.3, against 62.7 last month.
Europe has also managed to surprise positively and, at least for now, to avoid recession.
The same goes for the United Kingdom with a stagnation in GDP in the fourth quarter of 2022 (compared to the third which showed a decline of -0.2%) according to the first estimate of the national statistics office (ONS).
This stabilization therefore enables the British economy to avoid entering a recession (characterized by at least two consecutive quarters of decline in GDP).
On the bond front, the previous day’s gains are erased while our OATs show a yield up by +7Pts to 2.83%, Bunds show +6Pts at 2.370%, Italian BTPs +85Pts at 4.214%.
Across the Atlantic, the T-Bonds are consolidating at the end of the week with a deterioration of +4Pts to 3.723%, the ‘6 months’ settling above 4.924% (i.e. nearly 125Pts of inversion of the curve of rate), the ‘1 year’ stands at 4.885%.
The Dollar recovered slightly (+0.2%) towards 1.0700/1.0695E.
In corporate news, L’Oréal (-0.6%) published last night a turnover of 38.26 billion euros for 2022, up 10.9% like-for-like compared to the Previous exercice. Net EPS stands at 11.26 euros, up 27.6%.
Also yesterday evening, Lacroix reported a turnover of 707.8 ME for the 2022 financial year, up 8.6% on a like-for-like basis compared to 2021, reflecting ‘a very good commercial dynamic in France as in international and re-invoicing to compensate for the increase in the cost of supplying electronic components’.
This morning, Savencia Fromage & Dairy published a 16.8% increase in turnover to 6.55 billion euros for 2022, an evolution which results almost entirely from organic growth strongly driven by dairy products other than cheese.
Finally, Bouygues Telecom announced a judgment by the Paris Commercial Court ordering it to pay 308 million euros in damages to Free Mobile, in a dispute over old bundled offers from the Bouygues subsidiary.
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