The control room of Euronext, the company that manages the Paris Stock Exchange (AFP/Archives/ERIC PIERMONT)
The Paris Bourse fell 1.68% on Friday, weighed down by the speech of the president of the American central bank who reaffirmed that the fight against inflation was at the heart of his policy, ending a second week in sharp decline.
The star CAC 40 index lost 107.30 points to 6,274.26 points. Over the week, it fell 3.41%, bringing its losses to 12.29% since January 1. It is its worst week since the middle of June, during which it had touched its low at the end of the year.
Rising at the opening, then around the balance until 4 p.m., start of the speech of the president of Jerome Powell, the Parisian rating then stalled, like the European and American places. It falls back to its level of the end of July.
The week to wonder about the content of the speech “shows to what extent the markets are directed by the central banks”, recalls Lionel Melka, director of research at Homa Capital.
And while markets have spent the summer clinging to “chimeras,” with less stringency in the next steps, “Powell reiterated that he will go all the way, and they don’t yet know when s ‘stop’, in the hikes in key rates, the main tool of central banks to fight against inflation, he continues.
The Fed will “vigorously use its tools” to curb rising prices, Mr. Powell warned, which will lead to “a long period of weaker growth”, but abandoning it would, according to him, be even more damaging for the economy. economy.
The slowdown in inflation in July, measured in particular by the PCE indicator published on Friday, is not enough to lower our guard, he also commented.
Interest rates on France’s debt continued to rise and that of the 10-year maturity, which is the benchmark, even rose above 2% (2.01%) at the close for the first times since the end of June. It was still at 1.46% on August 15.
Sanofi alone to stand out
The pharmaceutical giant Sanofi is the only CAC 40 value to have ended significantly in the green: the title took 1.79% to 81.89 euros, while investors’ concerns about the financial consequences of the litigation in the United States around of Zantac, a treatment for heartburn, was dwindling.
TotalEnergies sells its stake in a Russian gas field
The French giant TotalEnergies (-0.20% to 53.93 euros) announced on Friday that it had agreed with its Russian partner Novatek to sell it its 49% stake in the company Terneftegaz, which operates the Termokarstovoye gas field in Russia. .
red everywhere
“There was no place to hide” in the stock market, observes Mr. Melka. Technology stocks like Teleperformance (-3.54% to 289 euros), luxury like Hermès (-3.71% to 1,336.50 euros), automobiles with Renault (-3.27% to 27.41 euros) or banks like Crédit Agricole (-1.84% to 9.12 euros), ended with losses.
Over the week, fears about consumption contributed to shopping center giant Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield losing 8.09% (51.57 euros per share), the worst performance of the week on the CAC 40 index.
© 2022 AFP
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