After spending most of the morning in slight contraction, the Paris stock exchange managed to rebound around midday, clawing back up to +0.3% in the second half of the day. At the closing bell, however, the Parisian index ended the session with an even more modest gain of +0.1%, finishing at 8,112 points. The advance was supported by Publicis (+1.4%), Veolia (+1.05%), and Michelin (+1%), all within the context of thin trading volumes characteristic of the year-end period (just 2.3 billion euros traded during the session).

Across the Atlantic, the mood was even gloomier, with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 both down -0.5%, and the Nasdaq falling -0.65%, losing ground in the wake of semiconductor stocks (-2%) and Tesla (-2.7%).
This period of calm between the year-end holidays naturally gives market professionals time to review the year gone by and ponder the outlook for the year ahead.

“Resilient macroeconomic conditions, profit growth driven by AI, and accommodative monetary policy have generated double-digit returns in developed markets,” Swiss Life Asset Managers summarized a few days ago.
The institution further highlighted “solid global equity gains in 2025 despite volatility,” even though “trade tensions and geopolitical risks triggered intermittent corrections” throughout the year.

With the new year approaching, the week ahead promises to be even quieter as macroeconomic data will be scarce until Friday, when manufacturing PMI indices are released for both Europe and the United States.

On the international front, the highly anticipated meeting between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a key highlight. Despite the usual self-congratulatory remarks from the U.S. side (“95% of the work is done”), no tangible progress toward ending the fighting was announced.

The Ukrainian president merely indicated that the United States had offered Kiev so-called “solid” security guarantees for fifteen years, extendable, with Ukraine seeking to prolong them as much as possible, with Zelensky mentioning “the possibility of thirty, forty, or even fifty years.”

While stock indices enter their seventh week of stagnation, the atmosphere is quite different in precious metals, with silver experiencing record volatility: up +8.5% on Friday, then an additional +4% between midnight and 1 a.m. in Asia, before a record plunge of -15% straight down from 84 USD to 71.3 USD within half a day. Gold also lost -4.5% to 4,315 USD, marking intraday swings unseen this year.

These swings are linked to a new increase in margin calls on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for futures contracts, the second in two weeks, forcing the most exposed traders to reduce their positions.

In the bond market, a positive trend is emerging in the eurozone with Bunds down -3.5 basis points to 2.832%, French OATs shedding -3.7 points to 3.531%, and Italian BTPs down -4.3 points to 3.471%.
The movement is more subdued across the Atlantic, with U.S. T-Bonds easing by -0.7 points on the 10-year to 4.124%, and the 2-year down -1.3 points to 3.47%. On the FOREX market, the euro is trading at 1.176 USD.

In corporate news, Alstom has signed a contract to supply 47 DMU passenger trains to Mexico, including 33 long-distance trains and 14 suburban trains, a deal valued at about 150 million euros. The group had previously secured a 920 million euro contract.

Atos Group has reached a binding agreement to sell its South American operations to Semantix, covering around 2,800 professionals in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and Peru.

Thales has signed a major contract with Defence Equipment and Support (DES) for the design, development, and delivery of the next generation of portable autonomous command centers. This initial contract, worth 10 million pounds sterling, marks the first stage of a program that could reach up to 100 million GBP to provide next-generation mine countermeasure capabilities to the Royal Navy.