CAC40: heaviness after 'US confidence', gold at its zenith at $2885

(CercleFinance.com) - The long-awaited publication of the 'NFP' was a genuine 'non-event', but the publication of US 'household morale' dampened the mood a little, with the 3 main indices tipping into the red: -0.
2% for the Dow Jones, -0.3% for the 'S&P' and -0.6% for the Nasdaq (down -4.7% for Marvell Techno, -3.5% for Amazon, -3% for Alphabet).

US job creation came in 25/30.000 below consensus, but the revision over the previous 2 months was +100,000 (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 again at 15:59 has just become slightly heavier.

The CAC40 is down +0.3% towards 7,980 but remains close to 8,000 thanks to Vinci and Sté Générale (+2.6%) then BNP-Paribas (+2%) but is held back by L'Oréal and Pernod Ricard (-4.2%).
For the week as a whole, the CAC is currently up by around 0.4%, illustrating the market's ability to absorb bad news, whether it be the DeepSeek episode or the return of the trade war to the forefront.
Despite a slight consolidation on Friday, the Euro-Stoxx50 and DAX40 set new weekly all-time highs at 5,350 and 21,900pts respectively (the overall advance being +1% and greater than that of the CAC40).
Wall Street reacted negatively to the release of US consumer confidence, which unexpectedly fell to 67.8 from 71.1 in January, returning to its lowest level since July, according to the preliminary results of the University of Michigan's monthly survey published on Friday (analysts were expecting it to rise on average to around 72).
Joanne Hsu, the report's author, spoke of a "generalized" drop in morale that spared neither Republicans nor Democrats.
The sub-index measuring consumers' judgment of the current situation plunged to 68.7 from 74 in January, while that measuring their expectations fell to 67.3 from 69.3 last month.

Inflation expectations jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3% in February, marking a new high since November 2023.
Friday's much-anticipated NFP report, on the other hand, had no impact: in detail, the monthly report on job creation showed that the US economy generated just 143.000 non-farm jobs in January, according to the Labor Department, well 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, nonfarm job creations for the previous two months were 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 a deficit of 3.9 billion euros after 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 fell by 0.8% to less than 56.2 billion.

In Germany, following a 1.3% rise in November 2024, industrial output 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 discovered a number of stats that have left them in awe: Bunds and OATs have erased their meagre gains of the previous day with +3.7 and +3.5pts to 3.120% and 2.406% respectively, while Italian BTPs have posted +5pts to 3.4920%.
T-Bonds '2035' erased their previous day's gains with +6Pts at 4.5030%.

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 make sure it gets back to the 2% target... so current rates are adequate'.

The Euro loses a few fractions (-0.2%) against the Dollar towards 1.0365, while Gold holds firm and even breaks new highs towards 2.885 (+4% hebdo), with a whole series of absolute records set over the previous 3 sessions (delivery times for physical gold are getting disproportionately long in London).

On the corporate front, last night's results from Amazon, the penultimate member of the "Magnificent Seven" group to publish its accounts before Nvidia, did not totally reassure investors, 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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