By around 8:15 am, the "future" contract on the CAC 40 index – February delivery – was up 70 points at 8,154.5 points, suggesting a favorable session start of about 0.9%, similar to Frankfurt (+0.9%).

The Paris stock exchange had already closed with slight gains yesterday (+0.1%), narrowly avoiding an eighth consecutive session of decline, following a speech by Donald Trump in Davos that was deemed less aggressive than expected.

While the American president reaffirmed his intention to acquire Greenland, highlighting its essential strategic value for the United States, he ruled out any military intervention, which greatly reassured investors.

After a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the American billionaire even decided to suspend the application of punitive tariffs on several European countries opposed to his plan to annex the country under constitution, which were set to take effect on February 1.

"In the end, what should we take away from this whole charade? Simply that we need to ignore the hysteria and excesses of the markets, filter out the surrounding noise, and focus on what really matters," says Michael Brown, market analyst at Pepperstone.

In his view, the fact that the American president ultimately chose to be more conciliatory after his threats over the past weekend—which had rekindled trade concerns and weighed on equities at the start of the week—perfectly illustrates the "TACO" strategy, in which "Trump Always Chickens Out."

"Following this sequence, it would be quite logical to expect geopolitical concerns to subside in the coming weeks," write strategists at Danske Bank.

"In this context, the temptation might be to position oneself to take advantage of the market's weakness ("buy the dip")," the Danish bank continues. "Except that, in reality, there hasn't really been a correction," observes Danske Bank.

Despite the turbulence linked to geopolitics, market movements have remained relatively contained, and several assets continue to trade at or near their historic highs, the Nordic institution points out.

This calmer climate allowed Wall Street to rebound sharply on Wednesday evening. After starting the day in the red, the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all moved up in unison by about 1.2%.

Despite mixed results from Netflix, tech stocks supported the trend, with investors massively repositioning on AI-related stocks such as Nvidia (+2.9%) and AMD (+7.7%).

Futures contracts on New York indices suggest further gains are expected Thursday, with anticipated increases between 0.1% and 0.3%.

The absence of U.S. sanctions against Europe also contributed to a strong rebound on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where the Nikkei was up 1.7% by the end of Wednesday's session.

However, the CSI 300 index, which includes the main mainland Chinese stocks, remained subdued, falling by 0.1%, a result also recorded in Hong Kong by the Hang Seng index.

With tensions between the United States and Europe easing, investors can once again focus on economic fundamentals.

Markets will be closely watching the latest U.S. growth figures, due for release early this afternoon. In its first estimate, U.S. GDP had grown by 4.3% in the third quarter thanks to strong consumer spending, but the latest data to be released today by the BEA may show a weakening of this trend due to the effects of the government "shutdown."

Investors are also preparing for new fourth-quarter earnings releases, including those from Procter & Gamble, followed by Intel's results in the evening.

The easing of risk aversion is not overly disadvantaging safe-haven assets like sovereign bonds, with the yield on ten-year Treasuries edging down toward 4.25%.

The euro is up 0.1%, returning close to USD 1.1690, nearly its highest since January 1.

Oil prices are slowing after their early-year rally: Brent crude is down 0.2% at USD 65.1 per barrel, and U.S. light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) is down 0.1% at USD 60.5.

Gold – the ultimate safe haven – is consolidating by 0.1% at USD 4,834.8 after hitting new record highs the previous day.