CAC40: in the red to start 2025

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8% at nearly 7320, the CAC40 is starting 2025 in the red, after a far duller year on the Paris Bourse than on other major Western markets.

Over 2024 as a whole, the Parisian flagship index fell by just over 2.1%, in contrast to London's FTSE (+5.7%), and far behind Frankfurt's DAX (+18.8%), the S&P500 (+23.3%) and the Nasdaq (+28.6%) in New York.

While Wall Street benefited fully from the AI craze and hopes raised by Donald Trump's victory, Paris suffered from a more difficult context, notably due to political uncertainties since the dissolution of the National Assembly.

However, the overall outlook for eurozone equities depends more on growth and earnings fundamentals than on French politics," wrote Claudia Panseri, CIO at UBS WM France, in a note published on December 20.

While she predicted a slow earnings recovery in the eurozone in 2025, she saw reasons for optimism this year, including a more stable German coalition and progress in the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

For this first session of the year, traders took note of the manufacturing PMI indices for December, in France and in the eurozone this morning. We await the release of the US index this afternoon.

Having fallen from 43.1 in November to 41.9 last month, the HCOB PMI index for French manufacturing, produced by S&P Global, signaled the sharpest deterioration in manufacturing business conditions since May 2020.

The PMI HCOB index for the eurozone manufacturing industry, produced by S&P Global, fell very slightly from 45.2 in November to 45.1 in December, illustrating a steady deterioration in the sector's economic situation over the past two and a half years.

In other stock news, Wavestone announced the launch of a share buyback campaign worth a maximum of 10 million euros, which will run until March 31 at the latest.

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