CAC40: 'NFP' without impact, indices in the EU and gold at their zenith

(CercleFinance.com) - The long-awaited publication of the 'NFP' is a genuine 'non-event', with Wall-Street expected to remain stable at 3:30 p.
m.

US job creation came in 25/30,000 below consensus, but the revision over the previous 2 months was +100,000 (a break with the previous 2 months, when revisions were mainly downward).000 (a break with 2024, when revisions were mainly downward).

The Paris Bourse was down -0.2% at 14:29 (towards 7.990/8000 pts), and was still at the same level at 3:15pm.
The CAC40 held close to the 8,000 mark thanks to Vinci (+3%) Sté Générale (+2%) then BNP-Paribas (+1.5%), but was held back by L'Oréal (-4.4%) and Pernod Ricard (-3.2%).
For the week as a whole, the CAC is currently up by around 0.5%, illustrating the market's ability to absorb bad news, whether it be the DeepSeek episode or the return to the forefront of the trade war.
Despite a slight consolidation on Friday, the Euro-Stoxx50 and DAX40 set new absolute weekly records at 5,350 and 21,900pts respectively (the overall advance being +1% and greater than that of the CAC40).
The 'NFP' published this Friday changes nothing: in detail, the monthly report on job creation shows that the US economy generated just 143,000 non-farm jobs in January, according to the Labor Department, a number significantly below economists' expectations, which were generally in the region of 170,000.

The unemployment rate nevertheless eased by 0.1 points to 4.0%, where stability at 4.1% had been anticipated, while the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.6%, and average hourly earnings rose by 4.1% year-on-year.
On the other hand, non-farm job creation for the previous two months was revised, from 212.000 to 261,000 for November and from 256,000 to 307,000 for December, i.e. a total revision balance of +100,000 for these two months.
There were also figures from Europe this morning, which had no repercussions on prices.
France's trade balance improved again in December 2024, according to CVS-CJO data from the French customs administration, with the deficit falling to 3.9 billion euros from 6.34 billion the previous month.

This month-on-month reduction resulted from a 4% rise in French exports to almost 52.3 billion euros, while imports were down by 0.8% to less than 56.2 billion.

In Germany, following a 1.3% rise in November 2024, industrial production in volume terms fell by 2.4% in December compared with the previous month, reaching its lowest level since May 2020, according to Destatis CVS-CJO data.

In the space of a few hours, bond markets have just discovered a number of 'stats' that leave them in awe: Bunds and OATs erase their meagre gains of the previous day with +2Pts to 3.1060% and 2.3940% respectively.
T-Bonds erased their gains, posting +4.5pts at 4.4830%, but all bets were off before the NFP.
A member of the FED, speaking after its publication, explained that the US economy "remains robust but with more moderate signals of vitality. Inflation is coming down slowly, and the FED needs to ensure that it returns to the 2% target... so current rates are appropriate'.

The Euro loses a few fractions (-0.2%) against the Dollar at around 1.0365, while Gold holds on to its highs at around $2,865 (+3.6% weekly), with a whole series of absolute records in the process (delivery times for physical gold are getting disproportionately long in London).

On the corporate front, results from Amazon, the penultimate member of the "Magnificent Seven" group to publish its accounts before Nvidia, did not totally reassure investors last night, with the stock giving up -3% in pre-opening trading... and the Nasdaq expected to remain stable.

While the Internet giant reported record Q4 earnings of $20 billion, almost doubling in one year, its revenue forecasts for the current quarter fell short of expectations, particularly in the cloud, as was the case for Alphabet on Tuesday evening.

In news from French companies, Airbus announced on Friday that it had delivered 25 aircraft to 17 different customers during January, compared with a figure of 30 aircraft received by 18 principals over the same period in 2024.

Stellantis announced on Friday that it had strengthened its strategic partnership with French start-up Mistral AI, which now plans to develop an AI-powered on-board assistant.

Finance specialist Viel & Cie reports strong business growth in 2024, with consolidated sales of 1.18 billion euros, up 9.4% at current exchange rates and 10.6% at constant exchange rates.

Finally, Oddo BHF maintains its "outperform" rating on Societe Generale shares, with its target price raised from €36 to €42 following the bank's results published yesterday.

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