The Paris stock market did it: the 7,800Pts mark was tested at 11:50 am on Friday, February 16 (i.e. +0.7%).
The CAC40 then pulled back slowly and now stands at just +0.35% at 7,770, limiting its weekly gain to +1.7%.770, limiting the weekly gain to +1.7%.
The CAC benefited from the dynamism of Eurofins Scientific (+4%), Legrand (+2.5%) and Safran (+2.7%).

Trading volumes are still very low, with only 1.8 billion euros exchanged after 7.5 hours of trading, which is highly unusual for a "3 Witches" session.
On the other hand, seeing the indexes turn green and break records (the Euro-Stoxx and DAX shone on Friday, at 4,782 and 17.200 respectively) is a classic scenario at the end of a stock market term with 100% positive weeks (and a 15th in a series of 16 for the US indices).
February's stock market term ended with a +5.8% gain for the CAC40, while that of the Euro-Stox50 was almost breathtaking at +7.5%... but only +5.5% since January 1.
But that's nothing compared to the Nikkei, with +8% since January 19th... and +15% since January 1st.

On Wall Street, a new wave of record highs had been expected since yesterday evening's opening (the S&P500 was soaring above 5,040 in electronic trading, the Nasdaq-100 was close to 18,000Pts), but the figures published at 2.30 pm dampened the euphoria a little.
The S&P500 fell by -0.2% (it's going to struggle to post a 16th week of gains, with a 0.1% margin to play for), while the Nasdaq-100 will end the week in the red (-0.5% at mid-session on Friday, and it'll be difficult to get back up to 18,000 by 10pm).

Investors reacted badly to the figures for US producer prices (PPI), a component of the PCE index (the Fed's preferred measure of inflation).
PPI rose by 0.9% in January at an annual rate in the US, whereas it had been expected to rise by 0.6% (compared with +1% in December). On a monthly basis, producer prices rose by 0.3%, against an expected increase of 0.1%.
Excluding food and energy, they were up by 0.6% on a monthly basis, compared with a consensus of +0.1% and +0.2% in December.

Building permits also disappointed, falling by -1.5% on an annual basis to 1,470 million in the US.
And it got worse with housing starts, which fell by -14.8% to 1.331 million, after 1.562 million in December (vs. 1.450 expected).

Building permits and housing starts continued to be penalized by high interest rates, even though mortgage rates have eased since their peak, with hopes of a Fed rate cut.

On the bond front, the previous day's gains went up in smoke: the yield on ten-year Treasuries fell back to 4.312% (+7.5pts and +14pts over the week), while its European equivalent, the Bund, rose to 2.412% (+6pts), and our OATs deteriorated by +5.5pts to 2.888%.

The euro is virtually stable at $1.0775, while oil prices are holding steady at $83 in London, despite the International Energy Agency's downward revision on Thursday of its demand forecasts for 2024.


In French company news, Tarkett last night published a net income, group share of ME20.4 in 2023, a far cry from the ME26.8 loss recorded in 2022. EPS is thus 0.31 euros, compared with -0.41 euros previously.

This morning, Eutelsat reported net income attributable to the Group of -191.3 million euros for the first half of 2023-24, compared with +51.9 million a year earlier, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 64.1% at constant exchange rates, compared with 73% a year earlier.

EDF announced a return to profit for the 2023 financial year, boosted by the resumption of nuclear production in France against a backdrop of historically high prices. The state-owned energy company generated operating income (Ebitda) of 39.9 billion euros last year, compared with an operating loss of almost 5 billion euros in 2022.

Orpéa (+4% at 0.0132E) reports that consolidated sales for the full year will amount to 5198 million euros (unaudited figure), up +11% on 2022, of which +9.5% is organic.

Finally, Sanofi announces that the Japanese Ministry of Health has authorized the manufacture and marketing of Dupixent for the treatment of chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) in patients aged 12 and over, inadequately controlled by existing drugs.

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