(CercleFinance.com) – Green remains in place 40 Mn from the close… but where have the volumes gone: only 1.6 billion euros were traded in Paris in 8 hours of trading!
European markets are actually posting marginal gains (a handful of points) while Wall Street is moving up slightly from +0.3% (Dow Jones) to +0.5% (S&P500 and Nasdaq).
Stock indices seem to be managing to digest the intransigent comments made over the past two days by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
For Capital Economics analysts, Powell’s comments were a real ‘bombshell’ for market expectations in terms of interest rates: the final target rose in 6 weeks from 5% to 5.75 % in the United States (and from 3.25% to 4% in Europe).
Given the resilience of the CAC40 and the E-Stoxx50 (+0.2% to 4,295), this looks more like a wet firecracker than a ‘bomb’.
But above all, we have the feeling that the initiatives are absolutely fixed at 24 hours from the ‘NFP’.
On the statistics front, the session promises to be calm: registrations for unemployment benefits in the United States increased by 21,000 during the week of February 27, settling at 211,000 against 190,000 the previous week, according to the Department of Labor.
But beware, this figure is artificially inflated by temporary registration of teachers during a period of school holidays.
Elsewhere, the four-week moving average – seen as a better indicator of the underlying trend in the job market – shows a moderate increase of 4,000 week-on-week to 197,000.
Finally, the number of people regularly receiving benefits increased by 69,000 to reach 1,718,000 during the week of February 20, the last week available for this statistic.
On the other hand, tomorrow will appear the monthly figures for job creations in the United States, a data to which the Federal Reserve is particularly attentive.
A great calm reigns over the bond markets where yields seem frozen since Wednesday evening.
The boss of the BdF, F. Villeroy de Galhau is betting that inflation will be halved in France by the end of 2023, i.e. a level close to 3%.
T-Bonds eased marginally by -2.5Pts to 3.9500%.
In the news of European companies, Hugo Boss announces ‘record’ results for 2022 and Group sales adjusted for currency effects at 3.7 billion euros, an increase of 27%. Despite significant investments in the business, EBIT increased by 47% to EUR 335 million driven by strong headline momentum.
AstraZeneca announced Thursday that one of its star immunotherapies, Imfinzi, has succeeded in improving the survival of patients with a form of lung cancer whose tumor is operable.
Finally, Credit Suisse announced Thursday that it has postponed the publication of its 2022 annual report, explaining that it needs more time to assess the impact of certain remarks made to it by the American SEC.
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