The Paris Bourse is moving towards a slight decline in opening for its last session, shortened, of the year. The flagship Paris index is currently gaining 29.2% in 2021, its best performance since 1999 (+ 51.12%) and one of the highest among the major world markets. A close above 7,201 points would allow the Cac 40 to end the year with an absolute record. European markets will close at 2:05 p.m., some 30 minutes after London and Dublin. The stock exchanges in Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Zurich will remain closed.
Wall Street finished slightly lower Thursday, the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 yielding respectively 0.25% and 0.30% after setting new records in session, while the Nasdaq Composte fell 0.16%. The contracts futures on American indices give up a few points this morning before the last session of 2021 in New York, which will end at the usual time. At Thursday’s close, the Dow Jones was up 18.92% for the year, the S&P 500 for 27.23% and the Nasdaq Composite for 22.14%.
Hong Kong pulled by the Golden Dragon
The Asian markets, on the other hand, ended the year up. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng ended its last session, shortened, with a gain of 1.24%, boosted in particular by the technological compartment in the wake of the 9.4% increase in the Golden Dragon index of averages. and Chinese large caps listed in New York, such as Tencent or Baidu. Over the whole of 2021, the Hang Seng nevertheless lost 14.08%, its worst annual performance since 2011. For its part, the CSI 300 of the main capitalizations of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges ended up 0.38 % for a drop of 5.20% in 2021, the first in three years.
At the end of a year marked by the pandemic and the takeover by Beijing of the technology, video games and real estate sectors, among others, the Chinese markets have welcomed the surprise acceleration of the growth of the manufacturing activity in the country, the official PMI index having increased by 0.2 point to 50.3 in December. Tokyo and Seoul were closed on Friday, closing the year with gains of 4.91% for the Nikkei 225 and 3.63% for the Kospi.
On the value side, Airbus announced that the lessor Aviation Capital Group had signed a memorandum of understanding for twenty A220s and a firm order for 40 A320neo family aircraft, including five A321XLRs.