(CercleFinance.com) – The Paris Stock Exchange is stable this morning, around 7,387 points, well helped by the automobile sector with +1.7% for Renault and +1.4% for Stellantis.
Caution remains in order two days before the publication of employment figures in the United States, likely to provide valuable indications as to the future timetable for Fed rate cuts.
Investors continue to bet on an upcoming rate cut in the United States, even if Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, recalled last Friday that there was still a long way to go before bringing inflation back to around 2%.
However, they are hesitant about the timetable that the Fed will choose to adopt and are impatiently awaiting the publication, on Friday, of the monthly report on job creation in the United States to try to guess the intentions of the central bank.
For the moment, the markets are counting with a 55% probability of a Fed rate cut in March, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch barometer.
The ADP survey, published two days before the official employment figures, will therefore be closely followed by investors at the very beginning of the afternoon in order to refine their judgment.
Among the other indicators expected during the day are also the figures for the American trade balance and those for productivity for the third quarter.
Investors hope that all these statistics will reinforce the prospect of a soft landing for the American economy and a rapid drop in the cost of credit.
In Europe, industrial orders in Germany should confirm the recessionary spiral that threatens the country, while retail sales in the euro zone should show that households are having difficulty recovering from the inflationary shock.
But beyond today’s announcements, it is above all Friday’s employment figures that will count.
After the good performance achieved in November, the markets should continue to catch their breath while waiting to see things more clearly, which seems to rule out major positions being taken.
For its part, the rates market experienced a wave of euphoria, with dizzying spreads having reached -10 points for ten-year paper which fell to around 4.17%, a low of almost three months.
Buyers of Treasury bonds already seem convinced that hiring will begin to reflect an economic slowdown which will confirm the Fed in its intention to ‘pivot’ and reduce its rates as early as March.
Despite long-term rates which continue to fall sharply, the dollar continues to show firmness, particularly against the euro which is falling to around 1.0790.
Oil prices continue to show heaviness, with Brent nibbling 0.2% this morning towards 77.1 dollars per barrel, confirming the cautious positioning of institutional investors and traders on black gold.
In their ‘shock’ forecasts for 2024, Saxo Bank analysts yesterday mentioned a possible skyrocketing of oil prices, to 150 dollars per barrel in the middle of the year, due to stronger demand than expected.
In French company news, Sopra Steria indicates that it has won two major contracts, representing a total value of £369 million, from National Savings and Investments (NS&I), a British public savings bank best known for its Premium Bonds .
Orpea announces that it is launching a capital increase with removal of the preferential subscription rights, reserved for the group of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, MAIF, CNP Assurances and MACSF Epargne Retraite, and accompanied by a priority right granted to existing shareholders.
This fundraising for an amount of 1.16 billion euros will result in the issue of 65,173,064,696 new shares at a unit price of 0.0178 euros.
Finally, Nokia and Orange announced on Wednesday that they had reached a speed of 800Gbps on the Dunant transatlantic cable, which connects France and the United States over a distance of some 6,600 km.
Copyright © 2023 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.
Did you like this article ? Share it with your friends using the buttons below.
