The Cac 40 oscillates around the threshold of 6,000 points regained Thursday evening, while futures contracts on American indices suggest an undecided opening on Wall Street. Investors are hoping that a recession will dampen the enthusiasm of the Fed in its determination to continue on the path of monetary tightening to bring inflation back towards its target of 2%. ” There is no painless way to bring inflation down. admitted Jerome Powell during his press conference on Wednesday evening. The increase from 5,000 to 213,000 in weekly jobless claims (217,000 anticipated) is not likely to change the situation.
Shortly after 2:30 p.m., the Bedroom 40 lost 0.38% to 6,008.436 points in a business volume of 1.2 billion euros. The contracts future on Dow Jones gain 0.3%, while and those on Nasdaq 100 are stable.
On Wednesday night, the S&P 500 fell 1.7%, taking its fall to more than 21% from its January 4 high in response to the third consecutive 75 basis point hike in the Fed funds rate. The Federal Reserve now seems to see recession as the price to pay for regaining control of inflation and, judging by its new dot plot projections, these The latter are expected to reach 4.4% by the end of 2022, suggesting a 125 basis point increase by then.
Banks are doing well
With the exception of the Bank of Japan, which persists in its ultra-accommodating policy, the other central banks have toughened their tone, like the Bank of England (second straight increase of 50 basis points), the Swiss National Bank (+75 basis points), whose key rate went back above zero for the first time in almost 8 years, or the Bank of Norway (+50 basis points).
Against the trend, the banks posted the best sector performance thanks to the increase in the remuneration of their deposits with the ECB granted by the central bank. BNP Paribas gains 1.4%, Agricultural credit 1% and Societe Generale 2.7%.
Present in the United States, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield down 3.9%. Technology stocks, which rely heavily on borrowing to finance their growth, are also weakened. STMicroelectronics loses 2.5%, Capgemini 1.7% and Teleperformance 2.6%. video game publisher Ubisoft meanwhile yielded 4%, weighed down by a deterioration of Stifel, which went from “buy” to “keep”. On his side, Accor plunged 7.5% as JPMorgan lowered its recommendation from “neutral” to “underweight”.