The Paris stock market is stable at around 7960 points, driven by Teleperformance (-14%) and Eurofins Scientific (+1.9%), but slowed by Bouygues (-1.7%) and Veolia (-1.4%).

Although the risk of inflation is no longer the main concern of investors - who see rising prices as a sign of good economic health - this does not prevent them from continuing to fear unpleasant surprises on this front.

"We saw this two weeks ago, when consumer prices (CPI) and producer prices (PPI) in the United States largely exceeded expectations", recalls a London-based trader this morning.

With this in mind, all eyes will turn, at 2.30pm, to the publication of the US household consumption expenditure deflator, the Fed's preferred price measure.

Economists are on average expecting the rise in core CPI - excluding food and energy - to accelerate to 0.4% in January, compared with 0.2% in December.

Investors know that this figure will inevitably be taken into account by Federal Reserve policymakers when deciding on the pace of monetary easing and the projected timing of rate cuts in 2024.

According to the FedWatch barometer, the market now rules out any reduction in the cost of money in March and May, but the scenario of a rate cut in June is considered credible by 51% of traders.

On the Old Continent, the first monthly inflation figures for Germany will be published at 2:00 p.m., before those for the eurozone as a whole come out tomorrow.

In the meantime, the markets were able to take note this morning that in the fourth quarter of 2023, the evolution of France's gross domestic product (GDP) in volume terms was revised slightly upwards to +0.1% (compared with a stagnation announced in the first estimate), according to detailed data from Insee.

In addition, according to Insee's provisional end-of-month estimate, consumer prices in France rose by 2.9% year-on-year in February 2024, a slight slowdown after +3.1% in January.

Lastly, in January 2024, French household consumption expenditure on goods fell by 0.3% in volume terms over one month, following an increase of 0.3% in December 2023, according to Insee's CVS-CJO data.

On the bond front, yields on 10-year US Treasuries tightened again, approaching 4.3%, while Bund yields for the same maturity hovered around 2.47%.

On the currency markets, the euro held steady against the greenback at around $1.08/EUR.

As hesitant as ever, the oil market slips back into the red, giving up some of the gains of the last two days, but is still heading for a comfortable weekly rise at current levels.

Brent crude is down 0.1% at $83.3 a barrel.
In French company news, Airbus Helicopters reports that it has signed a framework contract with Bristow Group for up to fifteen H135 helicopters (five firm orders and 10 options), with deliveries due to start in October 2024.

Arkema reports net income before non-recurring items of €8.75 per share for 2023 (versus €15.75 in 2022) and EBITDA down 28.9% to €1.5 billion, representing a margin of 15.8% (versus 18.3% in 2022) in a context of weak demand.
Air France-KLM publishes net income of 0.93 billion euros for 2023, 'enabling a return to positive equity at 0.5 billion for the first time since 2019', with operating margin at 5.7%, an improvement of 1.2 points.

For 2023, Technip Energies reports 'adjusted IFRS' EPS down 9% to 1.63 euros and a recurring EBIT margin up 0.4 points to 7.4%, on sales down more than 6% to 6.01 billion euros.

Veolia reports that last year it generated sales of 45.35 billion euros, up 9% organically and 4.4% excluding the effect of higher energy prices. Ebitda came to 6.54 billion euros, representing organic growth of 7.8%, above the +5% to +7% target range set by the company.

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