(CercleFinance.com) – One hour before the closing on this technical day of the ‘3 witches’, the Paris stock exchange is oscillating between red and green: the CAC has adopted 6,950 as a pivot since 2 p.m. and the February deadline has expired at this level, ie 1.6% below January’s ‘3 witches’.
The index was close to ending the week at equilibrium this morning and shortly before 2 p.m. (6.995 Pts).
The CAC40 is still ahead of the Euro-Stoxx50 which fell -0.5%, in the wake of the DAX (-0.9%) and Amsterdam (-0.4%).
Symbolic differences which reassure a little after the sharp decline on Wall Street on Thursday evening: after 1 hour of trading, the Dow Jones takes up only 0.2%, as well as the Nasdaq, the S&P500 shows +0.3%.
Heavy weapons fire (attested) is recorded in eastern Ukraine, which reinforces doubt about the reality of the Russian withdrawal to the Ukrainian border while Joe Biden biden insists that an invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops would remain imminent.
In a sign of appeasement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov have however agreed to meet at the end of next week.
“This could help promote a de-escalation of the situation before the weekend,” said Jim Reid, one of Deutsche Bank’s star strategists, this morning.
In addition to the noise of boots at the Ukrainian border, investors must deal with the lingering fears surrounding a possible acceleration of the Fed’s rate hikes, which is fueling bouts of volatility.
The basic scenario of corporate earnings growth – against a backdrop of normalization of Fed policy – should not be called into question, say analysts.
The change of situation that is taking place in Eastern Europe is nevertheless likely to raise certain questions for the rest of the events, we warn at Commerzbank.
“The Ukrainian crisis is not only impacting the markets in the short term, but it is also reinforcing trends such as de-globalization, industrial interventionism and increased military spending,” said the German bank.
In terms of figures, the Conference Board’s index of leading indicators fell slightly (-0.3% to 119.6) in January, after increasing by 0.7% in December and 0.8% in November (the consensus expected +0.2%).
Sales of existing homes rose 6.7% in the United States in January, according to the National Federation of Realtors (NAR). At 6.50 million units at an annualized rate, they are above economists’ expectations.
The median price of old homes sold rose 15.4% to a record $350,300.
The inventory of unsold homes fell 16.5% to a new historic low of 860,000, or 1.6 months of reserve at this rate of flow.
This morning, investors were able to take note of the unemployment figures in France. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of unemployed persons as defined by the ILO in France (excluding Mayotte) fell by 189,000 compared to the previous quarter, to 2.2 million people. The unemployment rate as defined by the ILO thus fell by 0.6 points to 7.4% of the active population.
INSEE, which publishes these figures, specifies that this unemployment rate is 0.8 points lower than its pre-crisis level (end of 2019) and its lowest level since 2008, if we exclude the drop occasional ‘trompe-l’oeil’ of spring 2020, linked to the health crisis.
Among inactive people as defined by the ILO, 1.9 million want a job without being considered unemployed (‘halo around unemployment’), a number which rebounded by 48,000 people over the quarter, after a sharp drop in the previous quarter (- 187,000).
In addition, operators were able to discover this morning that consumer prices in France increased by 2.9% in January over one year, after +2.8% in December 2021, according to INSEE, which therefore confirms its estimate. provisional.
Over one month, the seasonally adjusted CPI was up 0.6%, after +0.2% in December.
On an annual basis, the prices of energy (+19.9%) and services (+2%) accelerated, as well as, to a lesser extent, those of food (+1.5%), while those of manufactured goods slowed down (+0.6%) and those of tobacco fell back slightly (−0.1%).
Core inflation slowed in January to +1.6% over one year, after +1.9% in December. The harmonized consumer price index (HICP) increased by 0.2% over one month, as in December; over one year, it increased by 3.3%, after +3.4% the previous month.
Our OATs nevertheless eased by 3pts to 0.0202% (the T-Bonds did even better with -4pts to 0.9340%).
In the news of French companies, Hermès International publishes for the past year a net income group share up 77% to 2.44 billion euros and current operating profitability at its highest historical level at 39 %, an improvement of eight points compared to 2020.
But investors seemed to expect even better since the title fell -7% to 1.168E and sinks its floor of 1.185/1.190E.
Renault Group publishes net income of 967 million euros for 2021, compared to a loss of 8.05 billion in 2020, as well as an operating margin of 3.6% of sales and free cash flow automotive operating after variation of WCR of 1.3 billion.
Finally, EDF (-4% to 8.00E) publishes for 2021 a net current result multiplied by 2.4 to 4.72 billion euros, as well as an EBITDA up 11.3% to 18 billion , for revenue growth of 22.4% to nearly 84.5 billion (+21.6% organic).
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