I do feel that Wednesday and Thursday have taken a toll on investor sentiment. This can be seen in the color of the indexes of course, but also through my patented in-house indicator, the "hollow mailbox syndrome". Most of the time, I receive an excessive number of messages every day, which are filtered and classified via complex rules in little tabs called "Analysis", "Management Companies", "Listed Companies News", "Recruitment" or "Bloomberg Alerts" for example. Overall, between 100 and 300 emails pass through these pipes every day. All this to say that a few times a year, the "empty mailbox syndrome" occurs, always after a difficult stock market session. Like yesterday's. During these episodes, analysts prefer to let the storm pass to avoid saying stupid things, companies avoid publishing information unless they have no choice and managers practice a timely ostrich policy. So when I get as few messages as I did this morning, I know that the previous day's session went badly.

 

How bad? Well, let's just say that the market seems to consider since yesterday that bad news is bad news. In the past few months, the market has tended to rely on the mantra "bad news ? good news!", which allowed it to cling to the hope that central banks would become pro-growth again as they saw a steady stream of bad macroeconomic figures alongside a reduction in inflationary pressure. But economics being a hopelessly inexact science, things are not going as planned. There was a big disconnect between market expectations and the substance of the week's many monetary policy decisions. Not so much on the numbers, as all the central banks raised rates by half a point, as was expected. But rather on the speeches. Investors were hoping for a firmness tinged with optimism, they got a firmness tinged with caution. Jerome Powell for the Fed on Wednesday and Christine Lagarde for the ECB on Thursday made it clear that before worrying about when rates will come down, they will have to go through the phase of an economic slowdown.

I'll end by reminding you that this is the third Friday of the month and that it is synonymous with the derivatives clearing session. December clearing is also the fourth quarter clearing. So it's kind of the end of the trading year, at least for a number of products. So, there could be quite a bit of volatility.

 

Economic highlights of the day:

The flash PMI indicators for December for the major economies will be announced throughout the day. All the macro agenda is here.

The dollar is slightly down to EUR 0.9415 The ounce of gold is back down to 1785 dollars. Oil retreats again after its surge, with North Sea Brent at USD 79.63 a barrel and US WTI light crude at USD 74.57. The yield on 10-year US debt is holding steady around 3.48%. Bitcoin is still trading around 17,000 dollars.

 

In corporate news:

* Adobe jumped 4.2 percent in premarket trading as the Photoshop maker said Thursday it expects first-quarter adjusted earnings per share of between $3.65 and $3.70, compared with analysts' consensus of $3.64, according to Refinitiv data.

* The French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) announced Friday that searches were conducted Thursday at the General Electric site in Belfort as part of a preliminary investigation into aggravated tax fraud.

* U.S. Steel gained nearly 1% in premarket trading after the company raised its fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share guidance.

* Amazon will adapt the battle game "Warhammer 40,000" for film and television after signing a tentative agreement with British publisher Games Workshop.

* Meta Platforms is up 1.7% in pre-market trading after JP Morgan raised its recommendation to "overweight" from "neutral".

* Digital World Acquisition is down 4.8% in premarket trading after the announcement on Friday of the departure of its chief financial officer Luiz Braganza.