Never before have so many stock market indices broken absolute records in 1 session (for the Nikkei, it's been 34 years) on 5 continents.
Of course, we can mention the CAC40, the Euro-Stoxx50, the DAX40, the Dow Jones, the S&P500... and the Nikkei (1st record in 34 years and 2 months).
And that's not all, as these surges led to the appearance of impressive bullish "gaps" this morning when trading resumed, on all these indices.
The mood is absolutely "full risk on", as evidenced by historic call-buy ratios, with bullish positioning of over 60%.

It's rare for the fixed-income markets to display good dispositions in this kind of "exuberant" mood, but they're not doing too badly.

The US bond market remains stable, with T-bonds stagnating at 4.325%.
The cautious tone of the Fed's "minutes" on Wednesday evening confirmed that the central bank wanted to give itself time before cutting rates, which the market had already taken on board.

In Europe, there is still no improvement, but yields have stopped tightening: the poor German figures have not benefited Bunds, which are stagnating at 2.4450%, our OATs are easing by a symbolic -1Pt to 2.913%, and Italian BTPs -3.5Pts to 3.9140%.

On the figures front, the US private sector saw its activity growth slow in February, according to S&P Global, whose composite PMI index came in at 51.4 in a flash estimate, after reaching 52 the previous month, its highest since July 2023.

Cost pressures eased further, but growth momentum in the services sector weakened", explains S&P Global, while manufacturing output returned to growth.

Sales of existing homes rose slightly more strongly than expected, by +3.1% in January in the United States (NAR survey), thanks in particular to an acceleration of the market in the Midwest, South and West of the country.

Also according to figures published on Thursday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), annualized sales of older homes fell by 1.7%.
The median sale price was $379.100, an increase of 5.1% over 12 months.
At the current rate, it takes about three months to clear the inventory of homes, says the NAR.

The Labor Department announced a drop of -12,000 in US unemployment benefits for the week of February 12, to 201,000 claimants.

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came out at 215,250 for the same week, down by 3,500 on the previous week's revised average.

Finally, the number of people receiving regular benefits fell by 27,000 to 1,862,000 for the week ending February 5, the most recent period available for this statistic.

On the European statistics front, the HCOB composite PMI flash index for overall activity in the eurozone came in at 48.9 in February, compared with 47.9 in January.
This upturn is explained by the good HCOB composite PMI index for overall activity in France: it rose from 44.6 in January to 47.7 in February, a nine-month high that signals the smallest decline in private sector activity in the current downturn.

The opposite was true of the German manufacturing PMI for February, with a drop of -3.2pts to 42.3... mis which had little impact on the composite HCOB PMI.






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