CAC40: caution prevails ahead of crucial deadlines

(CercleFinance.com) - The Paris Bourse ended the session down 1.
03% at 7530 points, penalized in particular by Edenred (-4.1%), Stellantis (-4%) and L'Oréal (-3.3%), despite Kering's +4.6% rise.

The session was punctuated by a number of US statistics, such as the latest estimate of Q1 GDP, which came in at +1.4% (vs. +1.3%.

Durable goods orders came as a pleasant surprise, rising by +0.1% where the consensus was for -0.6%.

Real estate remains depressed, as promised home sales fell by 2.1% in May, whereas they had been expected to rise by 0.6% after plunging by 7.7% the previous month.

The Labor Department announced that 233,000 new jobless claims were registered in the US in the week to June 17, down by 6,000 on the previous week, which was revised upwards from 238,000 to 239,000.

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came in at 236,000, an increase of 3,000 on the previous week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, news will also be dominated by the televised debate scheduled for this evening between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on CNN, with a view to the November 5 presidential election.

With less than five months to go to the polls, polls are predicting a particularly close election (46% of voting intentions for Trump, 45% for Biden), hence the importance of this confrontation.

In France too, candidates will be throwing their last energies into the campaign to mark the first round of early parliamentary elections, to be held on Sunday.

Beyond the upcoming composition of the National Assembly, investors remain primarily concerned by the budgetary issues of the opposing forces, which threaten to derail public accounts.

Thursday's session will also be busy on the indicators front, with durable goods orders, unemployment benefit registrations and the third estimate of first-quarter GDP due to be released in the early afternoon in the USA.

On the bond market, the 10-year yield on US government bonds eased slightly to 4.2830% (-3pt) on the eve of the PCE inflation figures.

The German equivalent is stagnating at around 2.4500%, while our OATs are down +4pts at 3.262% (the spread has risen to +81pts from 70 at the start of the week).

Brent crude is up 1.3% at $86.3 a barrel, while the dollar is down -0.2% against the euro at $1.07/E.

In other French company news, Sanofi reports the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) of the results of a positive Phase III trial of Dupixent (dupilumab) in the treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis in children aged 12 months to 11 years.

Saint-Gobain announces that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Fosroc, a leading unlisted global player in construction chemicals, for $1.025 billion (around €960 million) in cash.

Technip Energies and Shell Catalysts & Technologies announce a technology transfer agreement to accelerate the commercialization of Technip Energies' Bio-2-Glycols technology for the production of Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) from glucose.

Finally, TotalEnergies announces that it has signed an agreement to sell its interests in all of its West of Shetland assets in the UK to The Prax Group.

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