The Paris stock market rallied (+0.25% towards 7,950) after several hours of narrow oscillation...with no direction around 7935 points.
The CAC40 benefited from the welcome resilience of Wall Street (which returned to the green) and the surge of Bouygues (+7%), followed by Alstom (+4.6%) and ST-Micro (+2%), which offset the -10% for Eurofins Scientific and -3.5% for Edenred.

Wall Street provided unexpected support: while the Dow Jones remained hesitant (-0.2%), the S&P500 went into the green (for the symbol), the Nasdaq advanced by 0.25% and returned to the 16,000 mark, while the Nasdaq-100 flirted with the 18,000 mark.

As investors prepare for several key statistics to be released in the coming days, high valuations threaten to condemn the US stock market to a standstill.

At 23 times expected earnings, the S&P 500 index, which is already up over 6% since January 1, is 35% more expensive than its 20-year historical average of 17x, according to Citi.
In this sense, Thursday's release of the PCE index of consumer spending excluding food and energy, the Federal Reserve's preferred indicator for gauging inflation, will act as a test.

Released this morning, durable goods orders fell by 6.1% in January compared with December, following a sequential decline of 0.3% in December 2023, with the consensus forecast at -5%.

Excluding the usually erratic transportation sector, where orders plunged by 16.2% in January, US durable goods orders fell by just 0.3% last month.

On the bond market, the stock market pause does not favor a return to Treasuries, with the US 10-year yield hovering around 4.28%, and the 2-year tending towards 4.69%...

The euro remains stable against the greenback, at $1.0840/euro.

Brent crude is up +0.6%, topping $83 a barrel in London.

In French corporate news, conglomerate Bouygues reports net income, group share of 1.04 billion euros for 2023, compared with 973 million the previous year, and recurring operating income from ordinary activities (ROCA) up 19% to 2.41 billion.

Orange and BNP Paribas announce that they have concluded their exclusive negotiations begun in June 2023, with the signing of agreements materializing their collaboration, including a referencing agreement concerning Orange Bank's customer portfolio in France.

Eurofins Scientific reports adjusted net profit of €568 million for the past year, or €2.71 per share, and adjusted EBITDA down 9.9% to €1.36 billion, at the upper end of its target range of €1.32-1.37 billion.

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