Friday’s rebound (+1.34%) failed to reverse the trend over the week. The Cac 40 posted a weekly decline of 2%, which more than erased the small rebound of the previous week. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones fell 0.38%, but the Nasdaq lost 3.4% (Friday at 5 p.m.).
While investors have remained attentive to the new sanctions decided or envisaged by the United States and the European Union against Russia, they have above all watched the rise in interest rates on both sides of the Atlantic, a phenomenon which mechanically weighs on growth stocks, such as Nasdaq technology.
The 10-year American loan was close to 2.7% on Friday evening, while its French counterpart rose to 1.26%. In the United States, it was the prospect of a rapid tightening of monetary policy, in order to curb inflation, which boosted the yield of the T-Bond. Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest monetary policy meeting revealed that the latter was planning to tackle the reduction of its balance sheet as early as next month, and for $95 billion a month.
In Paris, the tightening of voting intentions in favor of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, according to the polls that marked the week, reminded the market of the proximity of the presidential election. The risk of a victory for the representative of the far right has also contributed to the nervousness of investors, causing a disconnection of the OAT rate and the Cac 40 compared to other countries.
These elements of uncertainty should persist over the next week, but we will also have to take into account the start of the publications of the major groups for the first quarter and, above all, with the trends given for the coming months by these companies, against a background of war, rising costs and rates, and lockdowns in China.