The Paris stock market ended the final session of the week (and also of the month and quarter) at 8205 points, perfectly balanced (+0.01%), well helped by the momentum of the stock market shares, with +2.3% for Société Générale, +1.8% for BNP Paribas and +1.7% for Crédit Agricole. The day's biggest gainer was Eurofins Scientific, up +2.9%.

At the end of the morning, the Paris index briefly touched 8254 points - a new all-time intraday record which enabled it to test the symbolic threshold of 8250 points, its long-term target - before gradually ceding all its gains until the final gong.

Paris has gained nearly 0.6% since the start of the week, and is now approaching 9% since the beginning of the year.

Before the long Easter weekend - Western markets close for business this evening, with Wall Street only reopening on Monday and European markets on Tuesday - investors were treated to the latest estimate of US GDP growth for the 4th quarter: revised upwards by 0.2% to 3.4% annualized, according to a third estimate from the Commerce Department.

In addition, the Labor Department announced 210,000 new jobless claims in the US last week, down 2,000 on the previous week's revised figure (212.000 instead of 210,000).

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came in at 211,000, down 750 on the previous week's revised average.

Finally, the number of people receiving regular benefits rose by 24,000 to 1,819.000 in the week ending March 16, the most recent period available for this statistic.

The University of Michigan's consumer confidence index finally improved in March, according to the final results of the University of Michigan's monthly survey published on Thursday: it rose to 79.4 (from 76.5 announced in the preliminary version) after 76.9 in February.

Consumers' assessment of their current situation rose in particular, to 82.5 from 79.4 in February, while the sub-index measuring their expectations rose to 77.4, after 75.2 last month.

These results show above all a deterioration in consumers' inflation expectations one year ahead, now estimated at 2.9% instead of 3% last month.

Tomorrow, with the markets closed, the US PCE index could also ease or reinforce concerns about reawakening inflation.

Against this backdrop, T-Bonds stabilize at 4.198%, the euro retreats slightly against the greenback, by -0.15% to $1.079/E (-0.1%), and 'Brent' oil (+1.2%) ends the quarter at its zenith at $87.4 in London.

In company news, Trigano reports sales for the first half of 2023-24 up 18.4% at nearly 1.91 billion euros, with second-quarter sales (+17.8%) confirming the trend observed since the beginning of the year.

Following on from its announcement of the previous day, Renault Group reports that it has sold 99.132,100 Nissan shares, representing around 2.5% of the Japanese company's capital, resulting in a positive cash flow of 358 million euros.

Viel & Cie reports a 33.4% increase in net income (group share) to 98.1 million euros for 2023, and a 25.8% increase in operating income (including associates) to 172.1 million euros.

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