(CercleFinance.com) – The Paris Stock Exchange is stable, around 6,550 points, thirty minutes from the close of a session which will remain marked by the publication of numerous statistics closely scrutinized by the markets.
Thus, after the announcement of weaker than expected inflation in the United States in the middle of the week, the United States Department of Labor revealed today that US import prices fell by 1. 4% last month sequentially, after rising 0.3% in June.
Excluding the 7.5% drop in fuel prices, they fell by 0.5% in July.
At the same time, export prices fell by 3.3%, both overall and excluding agricultural products. Compared to July 2021, import and export prices climbed 8.8% and 13.1% respectively, annual rates down sharply from those of June.
These figures confirm the idea that the peak of inflation has been exceeded in the United States, data which is also likely to fuel the debate on the rate hike of the Federal Reserve, which remains the dominant factor on the markets. for the moment.
Investors also took note of an upturn in US household morale in August according to the preliminary results of the University of Michigan’s monthly survey released on Friday.
This barometer of consumer confidence rose to 55.1, after 51.5 in July, but is still down sharply from the figure of 70.3 published last year at the same time.
Earlier in the day, investors had also taken into account the virtual stability (+0.1 point) of the unemployment rate within the meaning of the ILO in France (excluding Mayotte) in the second quarter of 2022, at 7.4% of the working population, returning to the same level as in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to CVS data from INSEE.
Unemployment was 0.8 points lower than before the health crisis (end of 2019). Over the quarter, the unemployment rate increased by 1.3 points among young people, to 17.8%, but remained almost stable among 25-49 year olds (+0.1 point) at 6.7% and fell among 50 years or more at 5.2% (-0.3 points).
In addition, over one year, consumer prices in France increased by 6.1% in July, thus accelerating after +5.8% in June, according to INSEE, which therefore confirms its provisional estimates unveiled. at the end of last month.
This rise in inflation results from the acceleration in the prices of services (+3.9%), food (+6.8%), and to a lesser extent manufactured goods (+2.7%) , while those of energy slowed down slightly (+28.5%).
Recall that yesterday, the strategists of Capital Economics said they expected the euro zone to soon fall into recession under the effect of inflationary pressures, the tightening of ECB policy and the slowdown in global growth.
Moreover, according to an initial estimate made public this morning by the British statistics office, the GDP of the United Kingdom contracted by 0.1% in the second quarter, under the effect of a reduction household consumption, greatly affected by the rise in the cost of living.
In corporate news, Sanofi has tried to reassure investors about the Zantac case, a case that has caused it to lose more than 10% of its market valuation over the past two sessions.
In a statement released Thursday evening, the biopharmaceutical group recalls that neither the FDA nor the European Medicines Agency, which evaluated the molecule, could establish links between the consumption of ranitidine, present in Zantac, and the development of cancer.
Eurofins Scientific announced on Friday the signing of an agreement to acquire a majority stake in QARC, a Japanese laboratory specializing in the research of pesticide residues.
The European Commission says it has approved the acquisition of Clearway Energy Group and SunPower Group, both based in the United States, by the French TotalEnergies and the American Global Infrastructure Management.
Finally, TF1 yielded nearly 3% in Paris, penalized by an analysis by Barclays which downgraded its recommendation on the title by two notches on Friday, bringing it from ‘overweight’ to ‘underweight’ due to the looming recession in Europe.
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