The star CAC 40 index lost 27.62 points to 7,267.93. The day before, he had gained 108.28 points to 7,295.55 points.
In February, the CAC 40 gained 2.62%.
“Once the corporate results are over, we come back to the economic fundamentals and there it is the central bankers who take over and we wonder what dosage they will take”, explains Philippe Cohen, analyst at Kiplink.
“We know that the rate hikes are not over, but the magnitude raises questions,” he said.
Since Friday, investors have been digesting several macroeconomic indicators.
In the United States first, where prices rose 5.4% in January compared to a year earlier, a figure well above market forecasts which were around 4.9%.
Then on Tuesday, the inflation figures in France and Spain followed the same trend. For France, inflation accelerated in February to +6.2% over one year, following a slowdown in December and January. In Spain, it rebounded very slightly in February to reach 6.1% over one year, driven by the rise in electricity prices.
Inflation figures from France and Spain prompted investors to “increase their bets on the key European Central Bank rates peaking at 4%”, which would be the final rate of the ECB, notes Konstantin Oldenburger , from CMC Markets.
The European Central Bank (ECB) and the American central bank (Fed) want to lower the inflation rate to around 2%, in particular by raising their key rates, at the risk of slowing down economic activity.
“Rising rates mainly benefit the banking and insurance sectors,” explains Philippe Cohen.
In fact, Société Générale ended up 2% at 27.32 euros, BNP Paribas gained 1.05% at 66.15 euros and Crédit Agricole 0.82% at 11.56 euros. The insurer Axa meanwhile took 1.62% to 29.85 euros.
The Casino distributor saw its turnover increase by 10% to 33.6 billion euros in 2022 thanks to the dynamism of Latin America, but the activity in France of the hypermarkets and the e-merchant CDiscount continued to suffer, especially in the fourth trimester.
The group saw its share fall 3.61% to 9.61 euros.
Conversely, Carrefour takes third place on the CAC 40 podium, finishing up 1.99% at 18.71 euros.
