Up 0.82% at the start of the morning, the Cac 40 erased its gains following the reservations expressed by Moscow at the prospect of a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. 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. Vladimir Putin is due to chair a Russian Security Council during the day, the purpose of which has not been specified. The situation also remains tense along the border between Russia and Ukraine.
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.
Around noon, the Bedroom 40 lost 0.82% to 6,872.93 points in a business volume of 850 million euros. Wall Street will be closed on Monday for Presidents’ Day.
Blinken-Lavrov meeting scheduled for Thursday
While the tone went up a notch again this weekend with the launch of Russian maneuvers on the Ukrainian border, President Biden accepted the principle of a meeting with Vladimir Putin proposed by Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to appease the tensions. This summit is nevertheless conditional on Russian non-intervention.
The French presidency also indicated that the content of the discussions would be defined during an interview between the American 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 1,897.
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, twice on Sunday, with Vladimir Poutine, then with Joe Biden.
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, land and industrial goods stocks show the biggest sectoral declines in Europe with declines of 1.4%, 0.8% and 0.7% respectively for the associated Stoxx 600 indices. Teleperformance thus loses 3%, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield 2.6% and Alstom 2%.
Second capitalization of the Cac 40, L’Oreal down 1.6%. Societe Generale downgraded the cosmetics giant from “buy” to “sell”.
Air France-KLM gains 1.3%. The Dutch state, Delta Air Lines and China Eastern are expected to participate in the airline’s upcoming recapitalization. in the coming months “, and to which the French State has already given its support, report Sunday The echoes.
ADP rises 1.3% while JPMorgan raised its price target on the airport manager from 101 to 112 euros.
Rising at the opening, Faurecia now yields 2.9%. 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. ” The year 2022 will continue to be marked by the shortage of semiconductors, which should begin to ease from the second half of the year “, indicates the general manager of the group in a press release.
same for me Worldline (-0.3%). The payments 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 “.