The Cac 40 caught its breath after poor Chinese indicators


After a jump of 2.52% on Friday, which allowed it to avoid the curse of a fourth consecutive week of decline, the Cac 40 index caught its breath on Monday, ending in a small drop of 0.23% at 6,347.77 points. Wall Street is following the same trajectory, reversing some of Friday’s gains.

China retail sales plummet

It must be said that the figures published last night in China call for caution. Very strict health measures, in force in several major cities in the country, led to a sharp relapse in retail sales and industrial production in April. The former contracted by 11.1% over one year, where the consensus anticipated a decline of “only” 6.1%. With the exception of basic goods, such as food and medicine, which benefited from precautionary purchases and inventories made by the Chinese consumer, sales of cosmetics, jewelry and telecoms fell by more than 20 %, those in the automotive industry by just over 30%. Purchases of goods on the Internet are up 5.2% and represent almost a quarter of total sales. At the same time, the unemployment rate increased. It has now reached 6.1%, very close to the levels of February 2020 (6.2%), at the very start of the health crisis. Fortunately, the confinement is coming to an end, at least in the city of Shanghai. Shopping centers, department stores and supermarkets can since Monday welcome the public. The goal is to return to normal living conditions from June 1, in two weeks. In Beijing, on the other hand, the instruction remains that of teleworking. Transport has also been closed in several areas of the city due to a surge in daily cases of contamination observed on Sunday.

Behind the crisis in China hides another question, that of a synchronized recession of the major blocs of China, the United States and Europe. For Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, the probability of a recession has become very, very high ” in the USA. The bank has also reduced its growth forecast for the country this year from 2.6% to 2.4% and from 2.2% to 1.6% for 2023. Following suit, the European Commission has revised its GDP growth estimate of 4% to 2.7% this year, and 2.7% to 2.3% for 2023.” By putting further upward pressure on commodity prices, causing further disruptions in supply chains and increasing uncertainty, war [en Ukraine] accentuates pre-existing unfavorable factors to growth “, explains the institution. Inflation should reach 6.1% this year according to her.

The rest of the week will be marked by important events, with the publication of retail sales for the month of April across the Atlantic and the quarterly results of several big names in American distribution, such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot.

Bad day for Valneva

On the business side, Valneva plunged 19.09%, finishing dead last in the SRD. Brussels plans to terminate the contract which binds it to the Franco-Austrian biotech for the supply of vaccines against Covid-19, while the verdict of the EMA, the European Medicines Agency, has not yet been delivered and that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use should theoretically decide before the end of the second quarter of this year.

Conversely, Casino rose 4.76% after a jump of nearly 10% on Friday. The distributor has initiated the process of sale of its renewable energy subsidiary GreenYellow.

Within the CAC 40, Renault (-0.04%) confirmed the sale for a symbolic amount of its 68% stake in the parent company of Lada, as well as its Moscow factory, to a Russian state body. It thus draws a line under 2.2 billion euros in assets, while retaining an option for a medium-term return. Finally, JPMorgan downgraded Michelin (+0.37%) from “outperformance” to “neutral”, Oddo BHF did the same on Seb (-3.53%).


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