The Paris Stock Exchange sinks, while Russian officials announced that they destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles in the Rostov region, in Russia, reports the Interfax agency. According to the same source, five people who tried to violate the Russian border were killed. Moscow had already cast doubt this morning on the prospect of a summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, indeed indicated that there was no ” concrete project » and that a meeting is « premature for now, adding that Vladimir Putin has agreed to discussions at the level of foreign ministers. However, he did not rule out the possibility of discussions or a meeting between the Russian and American presidents if necessary.
The market continues to be tossed between the accumulation of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border and diplomatic initiatives to try to avoid a conflict. President Biden has accepted the principle of a meeting with Vladimir Putin proposed by Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to ease tensions. This summit is nevertheless conditioned by Washington on Russian non-intervention. The topics discussed have yet to be defined during a meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, scheduled for Thursday. In this context, so-called safe haven assets such as gold are subject to high volatility. The ounce of precious metal came close to 1,910 dollars this morning before returning to around 1,895.
An increasingly tense situation
Around 2:30 p.m., the Bedroom 40 fell 2.29% to 6,770.97 points after gaining up to 0.82% this morning, in a business volume of nearly 1.6 billion euros. In Frankfurt, the Dax lost 2.13% and in Moscow the index Moex gives up 6.84%. Wall Street is closed on Monday for Presidents’ Day.
On Friday, the announcement by pro-Russian separatist leaders of the evacuation of civilian populations from eastern Ukraine to Russia had revived fears of an escalation. Over the weekend, Emmanuel Macron spoke with the Ukrainian president, before doing the same on Sunday, with Vladimir Putin twice, then with Joe Biden.
At the macroeconomic level, growth in activity rebounded in February in the euro zone. The preliminary composite PMI index (synthesis between industry and services) established by IHS Markit recovered by 3.5 points to 55.8 points, driven by the improvement in services, the highest since November, thanks to the easing of sanitary restrictions. But price pressures remain strong. The manufacturing component, however, fell 0.3 points to 58.4.
Worldline discusses with Apollo
Another subject of concern for the markets is the prospect of a normalization of the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy against a backdrop of soaring prices. The probability of a 50 basis point hike in the Fed funds rate in March is no longer favored by investors. The latter will nevertheless closely monitor, on Friday, the statistics of income and expenditure of American households, and in particular the PCE component of personal consumption expenditure, the measure of inflation most followed by the Fed.
” Global statistics and central banks’ stance on monetary tightening are overshadowed by Ukraine, with markets nervously awaiting the next announcement sums up Su-Lin Ong of Royal Bank of Canada.
Technology, automobile and industrial goods stocks suffered the biggest sectoral declines in Europe with declines of 2.4%, 0.8% and 0.7% respectively for the associated Stoxx 600 indices. Teleperformance thus loses 3%, Renault 3.8% and Alstom 4%.
Second capitalization of the Cac 40, L’Oreal down 1.6%. Societe Generale downgraded the cosmetics giant from “buy” to “sell”.
Up more than 4% in the morning, Faurecia now yields 5.2%. The automotive supplier says it is aiming for an improvement in its margin and its turnover for 2022, after having recovered its results in 2021, despite the impact of the semiconductor crisis. For Oddo-BHF analysts, the accounts are ” widely “in line with expectations, ” no more no less “.
same for me Worldline (-2%). The payment specialist has announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations with Apollo funds after receiving a firm purchase offer for its terminals, solutions and services (TSS) activities. The fund has presented a binding offer to purchase 100% of this division for a price comprising an amount of 1.7 billion euros and preference shares of up to 0.9 billion euros. based on the future value creation of TSS “.