The Paris stock market remains in the green: the CAC40 (+0.1%) is 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 is a semi-holiday: the CAC40 has been "going nowhere" for 10 weeks, and traders are bored stiff (some are even describing the current period as "strange").
Wall Street is providing no impetus, with an initial rise slightly less sustained than expected (half as much, in fact), with the Nasdaq at +0.1% and the S&P500 at +0.2%.

Beyond the stagnation of the indices, what struck traders was the collapse in daily volumes, after a +10% rally 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 well under half, since 4 bn euros a day were traded when the CAC "GR" was at 10,000 points, and we're painfully close to 2 bn euros at 5:30 pm, and 3 bn euros counting everything at 5:35 pm, with the index at 22,000 points.

Trading volume at 4pm was just over one billion euros (1.15 billion euros, which is extremely low).

Activity was no more buoyant elsewhere in Europe, but the European Stoxx50 gained 0.2%, 'boosted' by Frankfurt's 0.4% rise (which is not spectacular, not to mention the fact that volatility was off).
Outside the Eurozone, the London Stock Exchange remained slightly in the red (-0.1%).

The most eagerly-awaited figure this morning - and one which left the markets unmoved - was that of inflation in the Eurozone: CPI stood at 7% in April 2023, compared with 6.9% in March, and that of the European Union at 8.1% compared with 8.3% in March, according to Eurostat - which therefore confirms its rapid 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 this 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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