(CercleFinance.com) – The CAC40 begins the 2nd quarter with a modest gain of +0.37% at the close, to 6,684 points, a trend shared in Frankfurt (+0.25%) and London (+0.31% ).
Wall Street is also in the green but is content with even more modest gains, the S&P500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq each grabbing nearly 0.1%.
For its part, the Euro-Stoxx50 rose by +0.4% towards 3.920 despite renewed concerns about the economic consequences of the Ukrainian conflict.
‘Vladimir Poutine published a decree according to which certain countries – in particular those of the European Union – must now pay their gas in rubles, failing which Russia would stop its supply’, recalls one at Liberum.
After gas, payment in rubles could be extended to all commodities over the weeks if Western sanctions persist (hard to think they won’t).
On the macroeconomic data front, operators were mainly waiting for the American ‘NFP’ (monthly employment report): the American economy generated 431,000 non-agricultural jobs in March, a number however slightly below the consensus (450,000) , but the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 points to 3.6%, a rate slightly below economists’ expectations and which above all confirms a situation of full employment which is pushing wages up.
Hiring continued at a healthy pace in the recreation and hospitality, professional and business services, retail and manufacturing sectors, according to the Labor Department.
The labor force participation rate stood at 62.4%, a level which remains however one point lower than that of February 2020, the month preceding the emergence of the health crisis in the States. -United.
In addition, job creations for the two previous months have been revised, going from 481,000 to 504,000 for January and from 678,000 to 750,000 for February, ie a revision balance of +95,000 for these two months.
Finally, hourly wages increased by 0.4% (i.e. 4.8% on an annual basis, a rate well below that of inflation which will flirt with 8% in March, after 6.4% (PCE) in February).
New rather contradictory publication concerning manufacturing activity: the S&P Global PMI index is up slightly to 58.8 against 58.5 in the 1st estimate (57.3 in February) but the ISM (Institute for Supply Management) was down sharply from 58.6 to 57.1 for the month of March.
The month-on-month decline reflects a slowdown in the expansion of US manufacturing activity. As a reminder, for PMI indices like ISM, the bar of 50 marks the limit between expansion and contraction of activity.
The US T-Bonds suffered a spectacular rebound in their yield +12Pts to 2.443%… tension already very palpable in the middle of the morning (2.425%).
In Europe, there were also figures: manufacturing PMIs in the Eurozone and in France.
The S&P Global PMI of French manufacturing industry came in at 54.7 in March, down from the six-month high recorded in February (57.2) and therefore indicating a slowdown in the growth of the sector.
The final IHS Markit PMI for the eurozone manufacturing sector fell from 58.2 in February to 56.5 in March, its lowest level in 14 months (May 2020), amid rising inflationary pressures and geopolitics.
Bond markets are deteriorating in Europe after their sudden upturn on Thursday: OATs show +7pts at 1.055%, Bunds +3.5pts at 0.588%, Italian BTPs +8pts at 2.1300%.
On the value side, Sodexo (-9.5%) publishes EPS multiplied by ten for its first half of 2022 (ended at the end of February), at 2.30 euros, but estimates that its organic growth in turnover on the year should be around the low end of its +15% to +18% range.
Bolloré announces that it has signed the contract providing for the sale to the MSC group of Bolloré Africa Logistics, bringing together all of its transport and logistics activities in Africa, on the basis of an enterprise value, net of minority interests, of 5.7 Billions of Euro’s.
Sanofi announces the approval by the AMF of the listing prospectus prepared by Euroapi as part of the project to list its shares on the regulated market of Euronext Paris, which is scheduled to start on May 6.
Stellantis has today concluded new framework agreements with BNP Paribas Personal Finance, Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance and Santander Consumer Finance. These agreements make it possible to reorganize the current configuration of Stellantis’ financing activities in Europe.
Finally, Pernod Ricard announces that it has today issued a bond issue denominated in euros, with a seven-year maturity for an amount of 750 million euros, a transaction which constitutes its first ‘Sustainability-Linked’ bond issue.
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