CAC 40: American technology to the rescue

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In the absence of any unpleasant surprises on the US inflation front, in terms of PCE prices, against a background of relief following the publication of the quarterly figures of two US technology samples, the CAC 40 closed the last session of the week with a rise of 0.89% to 8,088 points. On the quarter side of the large French groups, one word continued to summarize the situation: contrasting!

Excluding food and energy, PCE (personal consumption expenditures), the Fed’s preferred barometer in its assessment of inflation, rose 0.3% monthly, perfectly within target. Not enough to influence the prospects for interest rate developments in the coming months. But as Jeanne notes, one-year PCE inflation is higher than expected in March, at 2.7% per year overall and 2.8% at the ‘core’. In three months (on an annual basis) ‘core’ inflation will accelerate to 4.4. %, driven by services to 5.5%.”

The market is also digesting a new burst of results. With good news on the part of Saint-Gobain, which takes the lead in the CAC 40 (+6.9%) on Friday evening after achieving satisfactory revenues and indicating that several markets are close to a turning point.

Totalenergies gained 2.1% to a new all-time high at 69.48 euros, after flirting with 70 euros during the session. The group published results in the first quarter that were slightly above expectations. Above all, CEO Patrick Pouyanné admitted to Bloomberg that the company is considering moving its main listing to New York instead of Paris, to get closer to its shareholder base and move away from a cautious Europe regarding its renewable strategy energy.

And less good on the part of Airbus, which limited its decline to 0.9% after clearly missing expectations for the first quarter, even though the results were punished by a series of exceptional elements.

Excluding its flagship index, Nexity rose 7.2% after reporting quarterly activity in line with expectations and detailing its transformation plan aimed at revitalizing itself.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the main stock indices ended the last session of the year in the green, such as the Dow Jones (+0.40%) but especially the Nasdaq Composite (+2.03%), followed by Microsoft and Alphabet. , which published excellent quarterly copy the night before. The S&P500, the benchmark barometer of risk appetite in the eyes of fund managers, rose 1.02% to 5,099 points.

“Even if the tech giants’ results this week have moved the indices, the feeling is that more favorable inflation data will also be needed to revise the all-time highs of the SP500, the Dow Jones or even the Nasdaq100 after the recent correction. ”, warns Alexandre Baradez (IG France).

An update on other risky asset classes: At around 8am this morning on the foreign exchange market, the single currency was trading at levels close to $1.0720. The barrel of WTI, one of the barometers of risk appetite in the financial markets, traded around $83.00.

This Monday’s agenda will give priority to consumer prices in Germany.

MAIN GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

This is the time to take a break from classes. The CAC index, in contact with the upper Bollinger band, has followed two candles where the lows, the opening level and the closing level meet. And this before a slow decline started towards the lower part of an ascending channel (in black) on the daily chart. The session of Tuesday, April 2, according to the volumes, the length of the red body of the corresponding candle, strengthened the 8,220 points as a level difficult to exceed.

Then a major technical event took place, namely breaking the gap, the very symbolic threshold of 8,000 points. However, the latter does not appear as a scar on the index in the sense that it is filled in from the next session.

We are in the midst of a deep, legitimate gasp over the flagship tricolor index.

Two bearish targets present themselves: the February 22 bullish gap, whose lower limit is worth 7,821 points, and then the intermediate support at 7,700 points. Until then, the occasional formation of a sharp downward price increase cannot be ruled out before the buying camp is mobilized again.