The Paris stock market is down nearly 0.8% this morning, to around 7595 points, with the market feeling the pinch after the Fed last night emphasized its desire to delay and not rush rate cuts.

Although, as expected, the central bank kept rates unchanged, Jerome Powell's speech dashed hopes of monetary easing as early as March.

The Fed confirms its pivot, but doesn't want to make the mistake of cutting rates too quickly", says Bastien Drut, Head of Strategy and Economic Research at CPR AM.

The reaction of the futures markets has been clear-cut, with only 35% of traders now anticipating a rate cut in March, according to FedWatch, compared with 73% a month ago.

"The market will have to understand that rates will come down less and later than expected", warns Christopher Dembik , Investment Strategy Advisor at Pictet AM.

This is likely to generate, at the very least, volatility", he stresses.

The VIX volatility index jumped yesterday afternoon in New York to 14.3, its highest level since mid-January, i.e. during the correction at the start of the year.

The Fed's lack of support weighed on Wall Street on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 index dropping 1.6% last night to post its worst performance since last September.

While releases from the tech giants have so far been coolly received, reinforcing investors' pessimism, announcements from Apple, Amazon and Meta will be of particular importance this evening.

Meanwhile, on the statistics front, the PMI HCOB buyers' index for French manufacturing, produced by S&P Global, recovered from 42.1 in December to 43.1 in January, continuing however to signal a sharp deterioration in the sector's business conditions.

The HCOB PMI index for the eurozone manufacturing industry, meanwhile, climbed from 44.4 in December to 46.6 in January, its highest level for ten months, signalling a slowdown in the sector's contraction for a third consecutive month.

Lastly, the eurozone's annual inflation rate is estimated at 2.8% in January 2024, down slightly from 2.9% in December 2023, according to a flash estimate published by Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office.

Despite the postponement of rate cuts in the United States, the dollar continues to show strength against the euro, at $1.07/euro.
Brent crude is down 0.5%, at around $81.2 a barrel.

Finally, in news from French companies, Dassault Systèmes reports non-IFRS EPS of 1.20 euros for 2023, up 12% at constant exchange rates, "i.e. a doubling in five years as initially announced", despite an adjusted operating margin down one point to 32.4%.

BNP Paribas reports distributable income of 11.2 billion euros for 2023, up 10.2% and in line with its target, with the Group highlighting revenue growth, a positive jaws effect and a low cost of risk.

Kaufman & Broad reports a 23% increase in net income (group share) to 60.2 million euros for 2023, with recurring operating margin up 0.3 points to 7.8% and total sales up 7% to 1.41 billion (excl. VAT).

Canal+ confirms that it has submitted to the Board of Directors of MultiChoice a letter containing a non-binding indicative offer to acquire all the issued ordinary shares of MultiChoice that it does not already hold.

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