The CAC40 (+0.6% to 8,210) is not letting up, and neither are the other European indices, despite the heaviness of Wall Street.

The orchestration of the rise for this '4 witches' session (big quarterly deadline) since Monday is a model of the day: no news manages to slow down the bullish funicular and the Parisian index cheerfully gains more than 0.5% to finish, as everyone has guessed, above 8,200Pts.200Pts at 4 p.m., ending the quarter at the zenith of the zenith.
The Euro-Stoxx50 (+0.3%) held steady above 5,000Pts, gaining +10.9% since January 1st.
This was almost twice as good as the Nasdaq (-0.8%), which held on to 16,000Pts in extremis on Friday, ending the quarter at the zenith of the zenith.000Pts on Friday and ended the week down from -0.5% to -0.6%.
The Dow Jones lost -0.2%, the S&P500 -0.4%: all bets were off on Wednesday, and it was time to lighten up.

US figures are disappointing, and this Friday's figures will not dispel the unease surrounding recent inflation data.

US consumer confidence remained broadly stable in March, according to the University of Michigan's preliminary estimate of 76.5, compared with 76.9 the previous month.

Although the index was down 0.5% on February, this variation is well within the margin of error.

However, the index is up 23.4% on March 2023, and consumers are still very much alive, as demonstrated by Thursday's solid retail sales figures, accompanied by the strongest annualized rise in producer prices since September.

However, this market analyst judged that "it is highly unlikely that the data will move the FOMC's outlook, with the first 25 basis point cut still likely to come in June".

This morning, Parisian traders took note of France's consumer price index for February, announced as a provisional estimate at +2.9% annualized after +3.1% in January.
Over one year, consumer prices in France rose by 3% in February 2024, according to Insee, which has therefore revised its provisional estimate.

Bond markets are coming off the bottom of a "complicated" week: rates have eased significantly since Tuesday, and Thursday's session was very negative.
No relief on the horizon this Friday, with T-Bonds down a further +2pts to 4.315%, the same gap for our OATs (to 2.885%, then +2.5pts on Bunds (to 2.443%) and Italian BTPs to 3.7030%.

Bitcoin suffered a major stress event at around 2.30 a.m., plunging 72,000% to $67,300 (the low tested at around 10.00 a.m. this morning) before bouncing back to $68,400... making it barely stable over the past week.

In other stock news, Bolloré published on Thursday evening a net income (group share) of 268 million euros for 2023, after 3.4 billion the previous year, on stable sales of nearly 13.7 billion (-5% organic).

Following the announcement made in November, Spie announces the completion of the acquisition of ROBUR Industry Service Group GmbH, the necessary regulatory approvals having been received and all conditions precedent having been lifted.

Elis announces that it has placed a €400 million principal amount of senior unsecured notes under its EMTN (Euro Medium Term Notes) program, with a six-year maturity and an annual fixed coupon of 3.75%.

Euroapi has suspended its 2024 outlook, due to the suspension of API production at its Brindisi site in Italy due to quality control failures, a situation which is expected to impact the Group's operating and financial performance.


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