(Paris) Global stock markets once again welcomed the salvo of results on Thursday, good news tempered by fears of inflation and changes in monetary policies.
In Europe, Paris was among the most enthusiastic and gained 0.53%. London (-0.25%) and Frankfurt (0.11%) were further down, and the Stoxx 600 index was a little above equilibrium (+ 0.09%).
Wall Street was preparing to open higher, after blowing Wednesday: the futures contract of the flagship Dow Jones index rose by 0.25%, that of the broad S & P500 index by 0.33% and that of the NASDAQ technology index by 0.58% around 7:30 a.m.
In Asia, the cases of COVID-19 in China, Sino-American tensions and the pale economic outlook drawn by the Japanese central bank have obscured the picture: Tokyo in particular lost 0.96%.
“Most of the optimism is due to the good results of companies this week, because other than that, there is not much good news,” comments Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at Swissquote.
Doubts return, however, with the many meetings and decisions of central banks, ending with the US Federal Reserve next week.
The European Central Bank is holding its meeting on Thursday, but has already warned that it would not give any more indications on the normalization of its monetary policy until December.
But the tensions on central bank policies, with a hardening in Brazil and Canada for 24 hours, can be seen on sovereign rates: “brokers on the debt market are betting more on a restrictive policy,” continues Ipek Ozkardeskaya.
This led to a rise in rates for short-term maturities: the US 2-year took 7 basis points, at 0.50%, while the 10-year traded around 1.55%, ten points below these levels. of the previous week.
Mixed results for oil companies
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was down 1.97% to 1,730.00 pence, after reporting a loss of $ 447 million. BP also yielded 1.37% to 353 pence.
If TotalEnergies published a profit of 4.6 billion dollars, that was not enough and the title also lost 0.18% to 43.56 euros in Paris.
These securities can also be penalized by the marked drop in oil prices since the day before. Prices are under pressure from an unexpected rise in US stocks and Tehran’s desire to resume nuclear negotiations, making it more likely that its barrels will return to the market in the medium term.
The price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for December delivery was down 1.48% to $ 83.33 at around 7:20 a.m.
In New York, a barrel of WTI for the same month dropped 1.49% to 81.42 dollars.
The shortage of semiconductors weakens
The semiconductor shortage has affected auto giants Stellantis and Volkswagen in their bottom line: automakers both estimated the crisis had robbed them of 600,000 cars.
The German fell 2.83% to 198.12 euros, while the second group, listed in Paris, rose 0.51% to 17.65 euros.
In Japan, the shortage has also weakened the group of IT services and equipment Fujitsu (-8.13% to 19,985 yen) and the industrial conglomerate Hitashi (-1.91% to 6,650 yen).
UniCredit and Llyods are pulling financials
The two big European banks which published their results Thursday revised upwards their forecasts for this year: the Italian UniCredit gained 1.30% to 11.55 euros and the British Lloyds rose 1.33% to 49.61 pence . Its profit more than doubled thanks to provision reversals and rising revenues with the economic recovery.
On the euro and bitcoin side
Before the ECB, the euro was stable against the greenback at $ 11,602 around 7:20 a.m.
Bitcoin accelerated to rise above $ 60,000 (+ 3.40% to $ 60,930).