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Paris (AFP) – The Paris Stock Exchange started Monday’s session in the red, being cautious before a shower of monetary policy decisions expected this week, supplemented by macroeconomic data.
The star CAC 40 index fell 0.46% around 10 a.m., or 30.51 points to 6,647.13 points.
Last week, it fell 0.96% following nine consecutive weekly gains, a series not seen since 2009.
The main focus of the markets this week will be the monetary policy meeting of the most powerful of central banks, the US Federal Reserve (Fed).
The Fed should announce Wednesday evening, following the close of European markets, a new increase in its key rates. Given the slowdown in inflation in the United States, investors are hoping to see a lower rise than in the last four previous meetings, when the Fed raised its rates by 0.75 points.
Just before the start of the Fed meeting, the consumer price index for November in the United States will be published on Tuesday, a statistic that will be particularly scrutinized by investors.
On the Old Continent, the European Central Bank (ECB) meets on Thursday and might decide to slow the pace of interest rate increases, increasing them by 0.50 percentage points, following two “jumbo” increases of 0, 75 points in September and October.
In November, inflation in the eurozone experienced its first slowdown since June 2021, according to initial estimates.
“The revision of the scenarios (of the central banks, editor’s note) will be even more instructive than the announcements on the rates”, estimate the experts of Natixis CIB Research in a note, wondering regarding the “macro-economic projections” of the central banks, their price trajectory forecast, the balance between the fight once morest inflation and the risk to growth.
Franck Dixmier, global director of bond management at Allianz Global Investors, anticipates “a restrictive Fed and an uncompromising ECB”, thus “central banks remain focused on their fight once morest inflation”.
In addition, the central banks of England, Switzerland, Norway and even Mexico are meeting this week.
Caution is therefore in order “at the start of the week of all dangers which will mix leading economic statistics (in particular inflation and PMIs) and monetary decisions (with the Fed, the ECB, the BoE and the SNB )”, comments John Plassard, investment specialist at Mirabaud.
Sanofi no longer looks at Horizon
The French laboratory Sanofi announced on Sunday that it was no longer in discussions with the Irish biotech Horizon Therapeutics and had no intention of making an offer to buy the company. “The transaction price expectations do not meet the value creation criteria,” Sanofi said in a statement. Its title rose by 0.69% to 89.36 euros, it had lost nearly 2% following the announcement of these discussions with Horizon Therapeutics.
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