The Paris Stock Exchange ended up slightly on Thursday (+0.30%) without a marked trend, supported by a lull in the bond market, but uncertainties about inflation remain.
After opening slightly higher but much of the session in the red, the CAC 40 index gained 21.18 points to 7,194.16 points the day after an increase of 0.55% on Wednesday.
The relaxation on the bond market allows the indices to breathe a little, observes Andrea Tuni, an analyst at Saxo Bank, interviewed by AFP.
Investors are keeping a close eye on bond market developments after sovereign bond yields rose sharply this week as monetary tightening nears.
The US Federal Reserve, which will hold its next meeting next week, plans to raise its key rate soon to curb inflation, a major issue in the markets.
Investors fear that the Fed has underestimated the inflationary risk and may ultimately be forced to be more aggressive in its plan to raise rates to contain the acceleration in prices.
The indecision concerning the rise in prices seems to spring from the European Central Bank.
Its president Christine Lagarde expects inflation to decline in the course of 2022, but some members of the board of governors have estimated that an inflation scenario higher for longer could not be excluded, underlines the minutes of their meeting of December published Thursday.
Since the beginning of the year, the markets have resisted periods of decline by showing a capacity to rebound to erase bad sessions fairly quickly, rarely taking more than two sessions to catch up with losses that may have been significant, underlines Mr. Tuni .
On corporate results, expectations are very high: those of Netflix, the first technological behemoth to publish its figures this evening in the United States, will be particularly examined for their impact on the scale of the American Nasdaq index.
Confrontation at the head of Soitec
The French company in the semiconductor sector Soitec plunged 18.80% to 167.60 euros after a governance crisis. She announced on Wednesday the forthcoming departure of her general manager Paul Boudre, in a decision contested by the executive committee which considered it incomprehensible according to concordant sources.
Banks in tandem with rates
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Financial stocks followed the relaxation of the bond market, such as BNP Paribas, which dropped 1.97% to 64.11 euros, Crdit Agricole (-0.37% to 13.49 euros) or Axa (-0.62 % 27.83 euros).
Valneva, new hope on its vaccine candidate
After its sharp fall on Wednesday (-12%), i.e. a halving of its value since its peak at the end of November, Valneva resumed 19.77% to 16.54 euros. The Franco-Austrian laboratory announced that a preliminary study showed that three doses of its vaccine candidate induce neutralization of the Omicron variant.
Eramet recommends
The title of the mining group Eramet (+1.11% to 95.30 euros) benefited from an increase in the recommendation to outperform against neutral by Oddo BHF.