The Paris stock exchange remains stagnant, yet again: the CAC40 fluctuates between -0.1 and +0.1%, just like the Euro-Stoxx50.
There is no momentum coming from Wall Street, with the S&P500 flat, the Nasdaq up +0.4%, but the Dow Jones dropping symmetrically by 0.4% (even as rates finally ease after two months of slow but steady increases).

It is the DAX that steals the spotlight and looks set to end the session at a brilliant all-time high with +0.9% at 25,120 points, buoyed by defense sector stocks (Rheinmetal +4.3%).

If the CAC and SBF120 manage to stay afloat, it is also thanks to defense: Thales soars by +8%, Exail Techno explodes by +10%, Eutelsat gains +6.5%.

Note the strong performance in construction with Eiffage (+4%) and Vinci (+3.2%), but the luxury sector suffers with -3.5% for Kering, -2% for Hermès and LVMH.


"The first three trading days of the year have marked a true broadening of the ongoing stock market rally," analyze the teams at Danske Bank. As markets continue to digest the US intervention in Venezuela and the fall of the Maduro regime, some observers are hopeful for a rapid restart of oil supply from Caracas.

"However, we anticipate a slower and more complex recovery in exports, due to ongoing operational constraints, legal blockages, and several years of underinvestment in the sector," note the experts at Neuberger Berman.
"Even if US policy is relaxed and broader export exemptions are granted, an immediate influx of barrels is not foreseeable," they add.
In this context, crude oil slips by -0.5% to 60.2 USD per barrel in London, and WTI falls towards 56 USD (-0.6%), despite a sharp drop in US crude oil inventories: they stood at 419.1 million barrels for the week of December 29, indicating a decrease of 3.8 million barrels compared to the previous week.
But this is offset by a rise in distillate stocks—including heating oil—which increased by 5.6 million barrels, while gasoline stocks rose even more sharply, by 7.7 million barrels, again compared to the previous week.

Finally, the EIA specifies that refineries operated at 94.7% of their operational capacity during the same week, with an average production of 9 million barrels per day.

On the FOREX, the euro is stable against the greenback, at 1.168 USD, but it is on precious metals that things are moving, with silver down -7% and falling below 77 after reopening between 82.5 and 83 USD in Asia.

On the statistics front, investors noted a rise in unemployment across the Rhine: with the arrival of the winter holidays, the number of job seekers in Germany increased by 23,000 sequentially to reach 2,908,000 in December 2025. Excluding seasonal effects, it rose by 3,000 compared to the previous month.

In France, household confidence picked up slightly in December 2025, according to the synthetic indicator from Insee, which rose by one point to 90, but remains below its long-term average (100).

It is a time of easing on Bunds (-3.8pts at 2.807%) and on our OATs (-3.6pts at 3.53%), while Italian BTPs shed -2.5pts at 3.472%.

Markets were watching the ADP employment survey in the private sector with curiosity: it turned out to be very close to consensus with the creation of 41,000 jobs in December, where analysts had expected 49,000 new positions (after 32,000 jobs were lost in November, linked to the "shutdown").

Markets then learned this afternoon of the "JOLTS" job openings index: the number of job openings reached 7.146 million versus 7.449 million in October, according to the latest "JOLTS" (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) report from the Department of Labor published this Wednesday.

For comparison, the economists' consensus had expected around 7.60 million.

The number of hires also slowed to 5.115 million in November, compared to 5.368 million the previous month, a figure that again points to reduced dynamism in the US job market.
US T-Bonds saw a slight improvement of -3pts on the 10-year (at 4.146%) and -4.5pts on the 30-year at 4.821%.