(CercleFinance.com) - The Paris stock market returns to equilibrium after an initial consolidation of -0.4%: the CAC40 (+0.1%) settles back above 7,400 (at 7,405/7.4150), a threshold which has served as a pivot since March 5, and which is set to remain so until Friday (the "3 Witches" session), as Thursday will be a semi-holiday: the CAC40 has therefore been "going nowhere" for 10 weeks, and traders are bored stiff (some are even describing the current period as "strange").

Beyond the stagnation of the indices, what strikes traders is the collapse of daily volumes, after a +10% rise from mid-March to the end of March, which had already taken place "in a vacuum".

But now, with the CAC40 at 2% of its all-time highs, volumes are not 50% lower than the average for the 21st century, but rather half, since 4 billion euros/day were traded when the "GR" CAC was at 10.000Pts, and we're painfully close to 2BnE at 5.30 pm and 3BnE all told at 5.35 pm with the index at 22,000Pts.

Trading volume at 2.45 pm is still far from the billion mark (which would already be extremely low) and hasn't even exceeded 850MnsE (0.85BnE).

Activity is no more buoyant elsewhere in Europe, but the European Stoxx50 is up by 0.3%, 'boosted' by Frankfurt's 0.5% rise (which is not spectacular, not to mention the fact that volatility has died down).
Outside the Eurozone, the London Stock Exchange remains slightly in the red (-0.1%) despite a rise of 0.2 to 0.4% expected on Wall Street by 3.30 pm).

The most eagerly-awaited figure this morning - and one that left the markets unmoved - was that of Eurozone inflation: CPI stood at 7% in April 2023, versus 6.9% in March, and that of the European Union at 8.1% versus 8.3% in March, according to Eurostat - which thus confirms its early estimate for the Eurozone at the end of April.

The lowest annual rates in the EU were observed in Luxembourg (2.7%), Belgium (3.3%) and Spain (3.8%), while the highest were recorded in Hungary (24.5%), Latvia (15%) and the Czech Republic (14.3%).
Further north, Sweden saw a further rise of 10.5%.

In the eurozone, the biggest contributions to annual inflation came from food, alcohol and tobacco (+2.75 percentage points, pp), followed by services (+2.21 pp), industrial goods excluding energy (+1.62 pp) and energy (+0.38 pp).

Earlier in the day, traders were informed of the ILO unemployment rate in France. This remained stable at 7.1% of the working population in France (excluding Mayotte) over the first three months of the year, its lowest level since the second quarter of 2020.

In the United States, the Commerce Department reported a 2.2% rise in housing starts in April, to an annualized rate of 1,401,000, a level perfectly in line with economists' expectations.
On the other hand, U.S. building permits - which are supposed to be a precursor of future housing starts - fell by 1.5% to 1,416,000 annualized in April, slightly missing the market consensus (1,430,000).
On the bond front, yields eased symbolically as the CPI came out in line with expectations: OATs erased -1Pt to 2.882%, Bunds remained virtually stable (-0.5Pt to 2.3050%), Italian BTPs -3Pts to 4.159%, Spanish Bonos -1.5Pt to 3.365%.
on the other side of the Atlantic, T-Bonds deteriorated marginally, by +2Pts to 3.258%, while the '2-year' remained anchored at 4.0700%.
On the FOREX, the Dollar continues to gain ground with +0.4% towards 1.0820E, while Gold is still eroding towards $1.895, penalized by the rising $.


On the value side, the Elior service group (-17%) reported an adjusted EBITA margin of 1.7% for the first half of 2022-23, up 2.4 points, but now expects it to be at the lower end of its initial range of 1.5 to 2% for the current financial year, which was harshly punished.

Vallourec, meanwhile, reported a rise in EBITDA (gross operating income) to 320 million euros for its first quarter of 2023, enabling the tube manufacturer to confirm its target of a further increase in 2022.

Iliad presents its first-quarter results today. Pro forma organic growth in Group sales, which reached 2.2 billion euros in Q1 2023, stood at 8.0%, with sales up 7.6% in France, 12.6% in Italy and 7.3% in Poland. EBITDAaL recorded pro forma organic growth of3.8% to 783 million euros

Dassault Systèmes announces that 3DEXPERIENCE has been selected for the STEP program led by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to build a prototype nuclear fusion power plant capable of supplying the national grid.

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