The Paris Bourse is picking up again this morning, confirming the return of volatility after its 1.5% decline the day before. And the release of January’s US jobs report will be just one factor as Christine Lagarde paves the way for an upcoming ECB rate hike. After the biggest drop in the Nasdaq Composite in nearly two years, futures contracts on the Nasdaq 100 are up nearly 2% this morning, led by Amazon, whose results released after the close beat expectations.
At 9:30 a.m., the Bedroom 40 gained 0.44% to 7,035.59 points in a business volume of 340 million euros.
Amazon and Snapchat jump after the market
Asian markets followed suit this morning, with the Japanese Nikkei 225 closing with a 0.7% gain, while the Hang Seng rose 3.2% late in the session in Hong Kong, led by technology stocks. , after the Lunar New Year holidays. Chinese markets will not reopen until Monday.
In New York, the Nasdaq Composite fell by 3.7% Thursday evening, weighed down by the fall of more than 26% of Meta Platforms, parent company of Facebook, which led to that of Snap or even that of Amazon.
The social network and the e-commerce giant jumped 59% and 14% respectively in after-market transactions. The former posted a surprise quarterly profit, the first in its history, while the latter beat expectations, driven by revenue from its cloud division and its stake in electric vehicle maker Rivian. The group also announced the 17% increase in the price of Prime subscriptions in the United States to 139 dollars per year.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will unveil its January employment report in the United States at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday’s announcement by ADP of 301,000 job cuts in the private sector last month prompted many analysts to revise their copy.
Employment under pressure from Omicron
The wave of Omicron infections may indeed have caused the first job losses in the non-agricultural sector in more than a year. The median forecast of the consensus formed by Bloomberg is at 125,000 job creations in January. The high estimate is 250.00 new positions and the low projection is -400,000 of the 78 economists polled by Bloomberg. The unemployment rate should have stabilized at 3.9% and the average hourly wage is expected to rise by 0.5% over one month and 5.2% over one year.
The statistics should hardly have any impact on expectations regarding the Fed’s monetary policy, especially as many economists are counting on an acceleration in job creation from February thanks to the sharp reduction in contaminations at Omicron and hospitalizations since the recent spike.
The markets have also integrated the change in the monetary paradigm. The Federal Reserve is expected to make its first rate hike since the end of 2018 in March, before three or even four more hikes this year.
Sanofi and Vinci exceed expectations
Biggest increase in the Cac 40, BNP Paribas advance of 4.2%. The bank announced to be well above regulatory requirements of the ECB in terms of solvency ratio.
Publicis continues its march forward with a gain of 3.3%. Several brokers, including Citi, Barclays and Credit Suisse raised their price targets the day after the publication of quarterly results that beat expectations.
vinci increased by 1.8%. The construction and concessions group expects to generate higher net income this year than in 2019 as its activities rebounded last year, leading to a doubling of profit and record cash generation. The company has also significantly raised its dividend.
Sanofi gains 1.9%. The pharmaceutical group has announced that it is aiming for a further increase in its net earnings per share (EPS) from activities in 2022, after this indicator exceeded its forecasts in 2021. The latter increased by 11.8% to 8.21 billion euros. euros (+15.5% at constant exchange rates). For 2022, the group expects EPS to rise “in a range at the bottom of the first ten” at constant exchange rates.